But before leaving the room Bathilde stopped to press her lips to her daughter's brow; then, after bidding the faithful Marie to stay with Blanche, she hurried to her husband's apartment. Léodgard was still in the same condition; the ghastly pallor of his face and his closed eyes gave him the aspect of a dead man; but a faint breath that came from his lips proved that life had not abandoned him. Bathilde gazed long at the sad spectacle, then fell on her knees beside the bed, and implored heaven to preserve Léodgard's life. XLVIII THE SWEETEST LOVE For twenty days, Léodgard hovered between life and death; a horrible delirium succeeded the prostration which immediately followed his wound; but during that time the most touchingly devoted care was lavished on him. Bathilde, Ambroisine, and the Sire de Jarnonville were almost constantly at the patient's bedside; at first the young wife passed whole nights in attendance on her husband; in order to induce her to be more reasonable, to force her to take some rest, it was necessary to tell her that her child was asking for her, that she refused to go to sleep unless her mother was with her. During those long nights, when the violence of the count's fever often caused him to talk aloud in his dreams, or rather in his delirium, his watchers had observed with amazement that the same person was constantly in his thoughts, that he was almost invariably tormented by the same memories; in short, that his lips many and many a time uttered a certain name; and that name was Giovanni. "Did you hear him?" Bathilde would ask her friend; "it is most extraordinary that Léodgard, in his delirium, is always thinking of that famous robber. One would say that he was afraid of the man--that he was fighting with him!" "Yes; only yesterday I heard monsieur le comte cry out: 'Avaunt, wretched man! do not pursue me so!'--And a moment later, he said: 'But, no, it is not he, it is I whom they mean to arrest! They have recognized me! I am Giovanni, I! the other is dead!'" "Poor love! what ghastly delirium!--Oh! when will he be calmer and recover his reason?" And one evening, Bathilde said to the Sire de Jarnonville, who seemed lost in thought as he listened to the sick man's wanderings: "Chevalier, as my husband is always thinking of this Giovanni, do not you believe that, instead of having fought a duel, as you thought at first, he was attacked by that terrible robber and received this dangerous wound from him?" "I haven't the least doubt about it, myself," said Ambroisine; "monsieur le comte has that last encounter ever present in his mind, and so in his delirium he believes he still sees this Giovanni." Jarnonville seemed to reflect before he replied; at last he said to the friends: "Your conjectures may be well founded; yes, it may well be that, instead of a duel, the count was the victim of an ambuscade."