All this time, in spite of my bravado, I began to have queer feelings in my stomach, in my head, and all over my body; I cannot get over it when I think of the delicious dish of mutton and beans, dressed with wine sauce, which I actually refused at dinner time. I could not swallow a mouthful; thought I, “This is final; if my appetite is gone, I must be done for.” I had to decide quickly on what was best to do; as I knew very well that if I died in my house the Councilors would burn it down on the pretext that it was infected. Just think of being mean and stupid enough to burn a new house for such a reason as that! But sooner than that should happen I would rather go out and die on my own dunghill. So, without losing a minute, I put on the worst old clothes I could find, made a bundle of a few books which I tied up with a chunk of bread and a candle, and told the apprentice to take a good holiday; then I locked the door of my house behind me, collected a few of my best books, and set off for a little place I had outside the town on the road to Beaumont, where I had built a little sort of shed or hut where I kept all sorts of rubbish, garden tools, a straw mattress, and a broken chair or two, “if they burn that,” thinks I, “there will be no great harm done!” I had not been there five minutes before I was in a high fever, my teeth chattered, I had a sharp stitch in my side, and my gizzard felt as if it was upside down. Now don’t think for a moment, my friends, that at this painful moment I was heroic and endured my sufferings in the grand manner, like noble Romans in the history books. As I was all by myself with nothing near but the stomach-ache, I just threw myself down on my straw mattress and howled. You could have heard me as far as the big tree of Sembert. “Good Lord,” I groaned, “what pleasure can You take in tormenting a poor creature who never did You any harm? Oh, how my head aches! and my back feels as if it were broken. It is hard to be cut off in the flower of one’s age and what difference can it make _when_ I go to Heaven?--of course it would be a pleasure--an honor I mean, but why this indecent haste, since we are sure to meet sooner or later? I am perfectly willing to wait, for my part; a poor worm like me! Lord, if it is Your will, I am, as You see, resigned and humble but--oh, I can’t bear these pains another minute!”