Arthur assured me that, if ever Edmee had thought me guilty and had expressed an opinion on this point, it must have been in some previous phase of her illness; for, during the last fortnight at least, she had been in a state of complete torpor.  She would frequently doze, but without quite falling asleep; she could take liquid food and jellies, nor did she ever complain.  When her doctors questioned her about her sufferings she answered by careless signs and always negatively; and she would never give any indication that she remembered the affections which had filled her life.  Her love for her father, however, that feeling which had always been so deep and powerful in her, was not extinct; she would often shed copious tears; but at such a time she seemed to be deaf to all sounds; in vain would they try to make her understand that her father was not dead, as she appeared to believe.  With a gesture of entreaty she would beg them to stop, not the noise (for that did not seem to strike her ear), but the bustle that was going on around her; then, hiding her face in her hands, lying back in her arm-chair and bringing her knees up almost to her breast, she would apparently give way to inconsolable despair.  This silent grief, which could no longer control itself and no longer wished to be controlled; this powerful will, which had once been able to quell the most violent storms, and now going adrift on a dead sea and in an unruffled calm—­this, said Arthur, was the most painful spectacle he had ever beheld.  Edmee seemed to wish to have done with life.  Mademoiselle Leblanc, in order to test her and arouse her, had brutally taken upon herself to announce that her father was dead; she had replied by a sign that she knew.  A few hours later the doctors had tried to make her understand that he was alive; she had replied by another sign that she did not believe them.  They had wheeled the chevalier’s arm-chair into her room; they had brought father and daughter face to face and the two had not recognised each other.  Only, after a few moments, Edmee, taking her father for a ghost, had uttered piercing cries, and had been seized with convulsions that had opened one of her wounds again, and made the doctors tremble for her life.  Since then, they had taken care to keep the two apart, and never to breathe a word about the chevalier in Edmee’s presence.  She had taken Arthur for one of the doctors of the district and had received him with the same sweetness and the same indifference as the others.  He had not dared to speak to her about me; but he extorted me not to despair.  There was nothing in Edmee’s condition that time and rest could not triumph over; there was but little fever left; none of her vital organs were really affected; her wounds were almost healed; and it did not seem as if her brain were in such an excited condition that it would be permanently deranged.  The weak state of her mind, and the prostration of all the other organs could not, according to Arthur, long withstand the vitality of youth and the recuperative power of an admirable constitution.  Finally, he advised me to think of myself; I might help towards her recovery, and I might again find happiness in her affection and esteem.