“Then it was really she!” cried de Sucy at d’Albon’s first words.  “Ah!  I still doubted it,” he added, a few tears falling from his eyes, which were habitually stern.

“Yes, it is the Comtesse de Vandieres,” replied the marquis.

The colonel rose abruptly from his bed and began to dress.

“Philippe!” cried his friend, “are you mad?”

“I am no longer ill,” replied the colonel, simply.  “This news has quieted my suffering.  What pain can I feel when I think of Stephanie?  I am going to the Bons-Hommes, to see her, speak to her, cure her.  She is free.  Well, happiness will smile upon us—­or Providence is not in this world.  Think you that that poor woman could hear my voice and not recover reason?”

“She has already seen you and not recognized you,” said his friend, gently, for he felt the danger of Philippe’s excited hopes, and tried to cast a salutary doubt upon them.

The colonel quivered; then he smiled, and made a motion of incredulity.  No one dared to oppose his wish, and within a very short time he reached the old priory.

“Where is she?” he cried, on arriving.

“Hush!” said her uncle, “she is sleeping.  See, here she is.”

Philippe then saw the poor insane creature lying on a bench in the sun.  Her head was protected from the heat by a forest of hair which fell in tangled locks over her face.  Her arms hung gracefully to the ground; her body lay easily posed like that of a doe; her feet were folded under her without effort; her bosom rose and fell at regular intervals; her skin, her complexion, had that porcelain whiteness, which we admire so much in the clear transparent faces of children.  Standing motionless beside her, Genevieve held in her hand a branch which Stephanie had doubtless climbed a tall poplar to obtain, and the poor idiot was gently waving it above her sleeping companion, to chase away the flies and cool the atmosphere.

The peasant-woman gazed at Monsieur Fanjat and the colonel; then, like an animal which recognizes its master, she turned her head slowly to the countess, and continued to watch her, without giving any sign of surprise or intelligence.  The air was stifling; the stone bench glittered in the sunlight; the meadow exhaled to heaven those impish vapors which dance and dart above the herbage like silvery dust; but Genevieve seemed not to feel this all-consuming heat.

The colonel pressed the hand of the doctor violently in his own.  Tears rolled from his eyes along his manly cheeks, and fell to the earth at the feet of his Stephanie.

“Monsieur,” said the uncle, “for two years past, my heart is broken day by day.  Soon you will be like me.  You may not always weep, but you will always feel your sorrow.”

The two men understood each other; and again, pressing each other’s hands, they remained motionless, contemplating the exquisite calmness which sleep had cast upon that graceful creature.  From time to time she gave a sigh, and that sigh, which had all the semblance of sensibilities, made the unhappy colonel tremble with hope.