Thérèse discovered genuine enthusiasm beneath that somewhat rough shell of obstinacy, and she could not refrain from smiling with emotion when she saw the vehemence with which he _coolly_ pursued his project of saving her. She felt deeply touched, and allowed him to extort the promise he demanded. Suddenly she received a letter in a handwriting that she did not recognize, it was so changed. Indeed, she had difficulty in deciphering the signature. She succeeded, however, with Palmer's help, in reading these words: "I have played and lost; I had a mistress, she deceived me, and I killed her. I have taken poison. I am dying. Adieu, Thérèse. "LAURENT." "Let us go!" said Palmer. "Ah! my friend, I do love you!" cried Thérèse, throwing her arms about his neck. "I realize now how well you deserve to be loved." They started instantly. In one night they reached Livorno by water, and were at Florence that evening. They found Laurent at an inn, not dying, but suffering from an attack of brain fever of such violence that four men could hardly hold him. When he saw Thérèse, he recognized her and clung to her, crying that they intended to bury him alive. He held her so tightly that she fell to the floor, suffocated. Palmer had to carry her from the room in a swoon; but she came to herself in a moment; and, with a courage and perseverance bordering on the marvellous, she passed twenty days and nights at the bedside of that man whom she no longer loved. He recognized her only to heap the grossest insults upon her, and, as soon as she left him for an instant, he recalled her, saying that without her he should die. Luckily, he had not killed any woman, nor taken any poison, nor, in all probability, lost his money at play, nor done anything of what he had written to Thérèse under the influence of delirium and disease. He never mentioned that letter, which she dared not mention to him; he was terrified enough by the derangement of his mind when he became conscious that it had been deranged. He had many other bad dreams while his fever lasted. Sometimes he imagined that Thérèse was administering poison to him, sometimes that Palmer was putting fetters on him. The most frequent and most agonizing of his hallucinations was one in which he saw Thérèse take a long gold pin from her hair and force it slowly into his skull. She had such a pin with which she kept her hair in place in the Italian fashion. She ceased to wear it, but he still saw and felt it. As her presence seemed, as a general rule, to excite him, Thérèse usually stationed herself behind his bed, with the curtain between them; but, as soon as there was occasion to give him any medicine, he would lose his temper, and declare that he would take nothing from any hand but Thérèse's.