The next day Major Anspach returned, timid, nervous, breathless, and filled with inquietude—there again was the _executioner of his happiness_! Once again in the morning M. Anspach dragged himself to the spot, without strength and without hope—he could scarcely raise his longing eyes from afar toward his terrestrial paradise, where, as usual, sat his tormentor, like the implacable angel of destruction; that impassive face, that form, as long, as thin, as venerable as the major’s own, but infinitely more enduring in its cruelty—than the patience of its victim! This excitement could not last without seriously affecting the major’s health; he took to his bed; a burning fever raged in his blood; weeks of unconsciousness passed by, and a long convalescence only permitted him to walk slowly along the Boulevard, with cane, and umbrella to shade him from the influence of the raging Dog Star; he sighed deeply and constantly. When his thoughts rested upon his past happiness, the wounds opened afresh, and he would stand for a long time plunged in melancholy reverie, interrupted only by nervous tremblings and audible groans. When, at last, he was entirely able to resume his walks, instead of revisiting the Tuileries, he studiously avoided them, and turning his course by the Rue du Bac, passed on to the Luxembourg; he wished to cheat his heart. But the effort was unsuccessful notwithstanding his heroism—the habits of old age are tenacious because they are egotistic. The Luxembourg presented no object that he loved, neither the people he was accustomed to see, nor the palace of his kings, which at times he had worshiped with stolen glances; neither the kindly memories of the past, suggested by the sight of objects on the other side of the river. At the end of some days, the major felt that he would infallibly return to his bed if he continued to quarrel with his inclinations; but in the apprehension of again meeting his adversary—whom he had come to regard with a mixture of hatred and fear—he conceived a most extravagant project. It is necessary, in order to admit for a moment that such an idea could enter the mind of one with head as gray as that of the major, to reflect that the infatuation of the old man, instead of relaxing during the paroxysms of fever, and passing away with its weakness, only became concentrated and fixed as an incurable mania. Whatever it was, he resolved to put it in execution the very day of its conception, if necessity forced him. CHAPTER V.