‘Your hand is so nice,’ he said once more. ‘You can’t fancy what good it does me. It seems to steal inside me, and take away all the pain in my limbs. It’s as if I were being soothed all over, relieved, cured.’ He gently rubbed his cheek against it, with growing animation, as if he were at last coming back to life. ‘You won’t give me anything nasty to drink, will you? You won’t worry me with all sorts of physic? Your hand is quite enough for me. I have come here for you to put it there under my head.’ ‘Dear Serge,’ said Albine softly, ‘how you must have suffered.’ ‘Suffered! yes, yes; but it’s a long time ago. I slept badly, I had such frightful dreams. If I could, I would tell you all about it.’ He closed his eyes for a moment and strove hard to remember. ‘I can see nothing but darkness,’ he stammered. ‘It is very odd, I have just come back from a long journey. I don’t even know now where I started from. I had fever, I know, a fever that raced through my veins like a wild beast. That was it--now I remember. The whole time I had a nightmare, in which I seemed to be crawling along an endless underground passage; and every now and then I had an attack of intolerable pain, and then the passage would be suddenly walled up. A shower of stones fell from overhead, the side walls closed in, and there I stuck, panting, mad to get on; and then I bored into the obstacle and battered away with feet and fists, and skull, despairing of ever being able to get through the ever increasing mound of rubbish. At other times, I only had to touch it with my finger and it vanished: I could then walk freely along the widened gallery, weary only from the pangs of my attack.’ Albine tried to lay a hand upon his lips. ‘No,’ said he, ‘it doesn’t tire me to talk. I can whisper to you here, you see. I feel as if I were thinking and you could hear me. The queerest point about that underground journey of mine was that I hadn’t the faintest idea of turning back again; I got obstinate, although I had the thought before me that it would take me thousands of years to clear away a single heap of wreckage. It seemed a fated task, which I had to fulfil under pain of the greatest misfortunes. So, with my knees all bruised, and my forehead bumping against the hard rock, I set myself to work with all my might, so that I might get to the end as quickly as possible. The end? What was it?... Ah! I do not know, I do not know.’ He closed his eyes and pondered dreamily. Then, with a careless pout, he again sank upon Albine’s hand and said laughing: ‘How silly of me! I am a child.’ But the girl, to ascertain if he were wholly hers, questioned him and led him back to the confused recollections he had tried to summon up. He could remember nothing, however; he was truly in a happy state of childhood. He fancied that he had been born the day before.