Jack slept a feverish sleep, and his dreams were a confused mixture of prisoners rattling their chains, and of travellers wandering over endless roads. He was one of these travellers: he was on a highway, like that of Etiolles; Cécile and his mother were before him refusing to wait until he could reach them; this he was prevented from doing by a row of enormous machines, the pistons of which were moving with dizzy haste, and from whose chimneys were pouring out dark volumes of smoke. Jack determined to pass between them; he is seized by their iron arms, torn and mangled, and scalded with the hot steam; but he got through and took refuge in the Foret de Sénart, amid the freshness of which Jack became once more a child and was on his way to the forester’s; but there at the cross-road stood mother Salé; he turned to run, and ran for miles, with the old woman close behind him; he heard her nearer and nearer, he felt her hot breath on his shoulder; she seized him at last, and with all her weight crushed in his chest. Jack awoke with a start; he recognized the large room, the beds in a line, and heard the sighs and coughs. He dreamed no more, and yet he still felt the same weight across his body, something so cold and heavy that he called aloud in terror. The nurses ran, and lifted something, placed it in the next bed, and drew the curtains round it closely. CHAPTER XXIV. DEATH IN THE HOSPITAL. “Come, wake up! Visitors are here.” Jack opened his eyes, and the first thing that struck him was the curtains of the next bed,—they hung in such straight and motionless folds to the very ground. “Well, my boy, you had a pretty bad time last night. The poor fellow in the next bed had convulsions and fell over on you. I suppose you were terribly frightened. Now raise yourself a little that we may see you. But you are very weak.” The man who spoke was about forty years of age, wearing a velvet coat and a white apron. His beard was fair and his eyes bright. He feels the sick man’s pulse and asks him some questions. “What is your trade?” “A machinist.” “Do you drink?” “Not now; I did at one time.” Then a long silence. “What sort of a life have you led, my poor boy?” Jack saw in the physician’s face the same sympathetic interest that he had perceived the previous day. The students surrounded the bed, and the doctor explained to them various symptoms that he observed. They were at once interesting and alarming, he said; and Jack listened with some curiosity to the words “inspiration,” “expiration,” “phthisis,” &c., and at last understood that his was looked upon as a most critical case,—so critical that, after the physician had left the room, the good sister approached, and with gentle discretion asked if his family were in Paris, and if he could send to them. His family! Who were they? A man and a woman who were already there at the foot of the bed. They belonged to the lower classes; but he had no other friends than these, no other relatives.