Not so, however, was it with Monsieur Maurice. Racked by a severe cough
and unable to leave the house for weeks together, he suffered intensely all
the winter through. He suffered in body, and he suffered also in mind. I
could see that he was very sad, and that there were times when the burden
of life was almost more than he knew how to bear. He had brought with him,
as I have shown, certain things wherewith to alleviate the weariness of
captivity--books, music, drawing materials, and the like; but I soon
discovered that the books were his only solace, and that he never took up
pencil or guitar, unless for my amusement.

He wrote a great deal, however, and so consumed many a weary hour of the
twenty-four. He used a thick yellowish paper cut quite square, and wrote a
very small, neat, upright hand, as clear and legible as print. Every time
I found him at his desk and saw those closely covered pages multiplying
under his hand, I used to wonder what he could have to write about, and
for whose eyes that elaborate manuscript was intended.

"How cold you are, Monsieur Maurice!" I used to say. "You are as cold as my
snow-man in the court-yard! Won't you come out to-day for half-an-hour?"

And his hands, in truth, were always ice-like, even though the hearth was
heaped with blazing logs.

"Not to-day, petite," he would reply. "It is too bleak for me--and besides,
you see, I am writing."

It was his invariable reply. He was always writing--or if not writing,
reading; or brooding listlessly over the fire. And so he grew paler every
day.