"One day--it was one morning--on returning from the club where I had passed the night stupidly losing sums which would have given joy to hundreds of families, I found on my desk a message from Rovère. If one would look through my papers one would find it there--I kept it. Rovère begged me to come to him immediately. I shivered--a sharp presentiment of death struck me. The writing was trembling, unlike his own. I struck my forehead in anger. This message had been waiting for me since the night before, while I was spending the hours in gambling. If, when I hurried toward the Boulevard de Clichy, I had found Rovère dead on my arrival, I could not, believe me, have experienced greater despair. His assassination seemed to me atrocious; but I was at least able to assure him that his friendship was returned. I hastily read the telegram, threw myself into a fiacre, and hastened to his apartments. The woman who acted as housekeeper for him, Mme. Moniche, the portress, raising her arms as she opened the door for me, said: "'Ah! Monsieur, but Monsieur has waited for you. He has repeated your name all night. He nearly died, but he is better now.' "Rovère, sitting the night before by his fire, had been stricken by lateral paralysis, and as soon as he could hold a pen, in spite of the orders of the physician who had been quickly called, had written and sent the message to me some hours before. "As soon as he saw me he--the strong man, the mad misanthrope, silent and sombre--held me in his arms and burst into tears. His embrace was that of a man who concentrates in one being all that remains of hope. "'Thou! thou art here!' he said in a low tone. 'If thou knewest!' "I was moved to the depths of my heart. That manly face, usually so energetic, wore an expression of terror which was in some way almost childish, a timorous fright. The tears rose in his eyes. "'Oh! how I have waited for thee! how I have longed for thee!' "He repeated this phrase with anxious obstinacy. Then he seemed to be suffocating. Emotion! The sight of me recalled to him the long agony of that night when he thought that he was about to die without parting with me for the last time. "'For what I have to tell thee'---- "He shook his head. "'It is the secret of my life!' "He was lying on a sort of sick chair or lounge, in the library where he passed his last days with his books. He made me sit down beside him. He took my hand and said: "'I am going to die. I believed that the end had come last night. I called thee. Oh, well, if I had died there is one being in the world who would not have had the fortune which--I have'---- "He lowered his voice as if he thought we were spied upon, as if some one could hear.