“Suddenly, as the vehicle came close to me, Sam, perhaps frightened by the noise and wishing to join me, jumped in front of it.  A horse’s hoof knocked him down.  I saw him roll over, turn round, fall back again beneath the horses’ feet, then the coach gave two jolts, and behind it I saw something quivering in the dust on the road.  He was nearly cut in two; all his intestines were hanging out and blood was spurting from the wound.  He tried to get up, to walk, but he could only move his two front paws, and scratch the ground with them, as if to make a hole.  The two others were already dead.  And he howled dreadfully, mad with pain.

“He died in a few minutes.  I cannot describe how much I felt and suffered.  I was confined to my room for a month.

“One night, my father, enraged at seeing me so affected by such a trifling occurrence, exclaimed: 

“’How will it be when you have real griefs—­if you lose your wife or children?’

“His words haunted me and I began to see my condition clearly.  I understood why all the small miseries of each day assumed in my eyes the importance of a catastrophe; I saw that I was organized in such a way that I suffered dreadfully from everything, that every painful impression was multiplied by my diseased sensibility, and an atrocious fear of life took possession of me.  I was without passions, without ambitions; I resolved to sacrifice possible joys in order to avoid sure sorrows.  Existence is short, but I made up my mind to spend it in the service of others, in relieving their troubles and enjoying their happiness.  Having no direct experience of either one or the other, I should only experience a milder form of emotion.

“And if you only knew how, in spite of this, misery tortures me, ravages me!  But what would formerly have been an intolerable affliction has become commiseration, pity.

“These sorrows which cross my path at every moment, I could not endure if they affected me directly.  I could not have seen one of my children die without dying myself.  And I have, in spite of everything, preserved such a mysterious, overwhelming fear of events that the sight of the postman entering my house makes a shiver pass every day through my veins, and yet I have nothing to be afraid of now.”

The Abbe Mauduit ceased speaking.  He stared into the fire in the huge grate, as if he saw there mysterious things, all the unknown of the existence he might have passed had he been more fearless in the face of suffering.

He added, then, in a subdued tone: 

“I was right.  I was not made for this world.”

The comtesse said nothing at first; but at length, after a long silence, she remarked: 

“For my part, if I had not my grandchildren, I believe I would not have the courage to live.”

And the cure rose up without saying another word.

As the servants were asleep in the kitchen, she accompanied him herself to the door, which looked out on the garden, and she saw his tall shadow, lit up by the reflection of the lamp, disappearing through the gloom of night.