Days are all alike to those who lie in mortal sickness. The hours are intensely colorless and they slip and slip and slip into painful wakefulness, into fever, into drowsiness finally, and then into weakness. The Capitaine de Sabron, although he had no family to speak of, did possess, unknown to the Marquise d'Esclignac, an old aunt in the provinces, and a handful of heartless cousins who were indifferent to him. Nevertheless he clung to life and in the hut of Fatou Anni fought for existence. Every time that he was conscious he struggled anew to hold to the thread of life. Whenever he grasped the thread he vanquished, and whenever he lost it, he went down, down. Fatou Anni cherished him. He was a soldier who had fallen in the battle against her sons and grandsons. He was a man and a strong one, and she despised women. He was her prey and he was her reward and she cared for him; as she did so, she became maternal. His eyes which, when he was conscious, thanked her; his thin hands that moved on the rough blue robe thrown over him, the devotion of the dog--found a responsive chord in the great-grandmother's heart. Once he smiled at one of the naked, big-bellied great-great-grandchildren. Beni Hassan, three years old, came up to Sabron with his finger in his mouth and chattered like a bird. This proved to Fatou Anni that Sabron had not the Evil Eye. No one but the children were admitted to the hut, but the sun and the flies and the cries of the village came in without permission, and now and then, when the winds arose, he could hear the stirring of the palm trees. Sabron was reduced to skin and bone. His nourishment was insufficient, and the absence of all decent care was slowly taking him to death. It will never be known why he did not die. Pitchouné took to making long excursions. He would be absent for days, and in his clouded mind Sabron thought the dog was reconnoitering for him over the vast pink sea without there--which, if one could sail across as in a ship, one would sail to France, through the walls of mellow old Tarascon, to the château of good King René; one would sail as the moon sails, and through an open window one might hear the sound of a woman's voice singing. The song, ever illusive and irritating in its persistency, tantalized his sick ears. Sabron did not know that he would have found the château shut had he sailed there in the moon. It was as well that he did not know, for his wandering thought would not have known where to follow, and there was repose in thinking of the Château d'Esclignac.