I pretended that I had forgotten something in the room. They had to yield. Zéphyrine went after the key and entered the room with me. I searched everywhere without saying what I was looking for. I examined the hearth and saw the fresh scratches on the disjointed stones, that Baptiste had left there with his knife. But what did this prove, save that in my madness I had caused a search for an object that existed only in the memory of a dream? I had thought that I had found a ring and had put it on my finger. It was there no longer, without doubt it had never been there! I did not even dare to question Baptiste on this subject. They did not leave me one moment alone in the ladies’ room, and they shut it up again, as soon as I went out. I felt that there was nothing to keep me at the chateau d’Ionis, and I left by stealth the next morning so as to avoid the drive in a carriage with which they had threatened me. The horse and the fresh air quite set me up again. I galloped rapidly through the woods that surrounded the chateau, fearing that I might be pursued by the solicitude of my beautiful hostess. I slackened my pace when two leagues distant, and arrived quietly at Angers during the afternoon. My face was a little changed; my father did not notice it much, but nothing escapes a mother’s eye, and it worried mine. I succeeded in quieting her by eating with an appetite; I had compelled Baptiste to give me his word that he would not say anything; he had made it a condition however that he would not feel bound, should I chance to fall ill again. But I took good care not to do so; I watched over my physical and moral welfare like a youth bent upon the preservation of his existence. I worked, but not too much; I took walks regularly, I dwelt upon no mournful ideas, I abstained from all reading of an exciting nature. The reason for all this had its source in an obstinate but tranquil mania and, so to speak, ’twas mistress of itself. I wanted to prove to my own judgment that I neither had been nor now was out of my mind, and that there was nothing more certain, in my opinion, than the existence of the green ladies. I also wished to restore my mind to that state of clearness necessary to conceal my secret and to nourish it internally as the source of my intellectual life and the criterion of my moral existence. Every trace of the crisis then rapidly disappeared, and seeing me studious, reasonable and moderate in all things, it would have been impossible to guess that I was under the dominion of a fixed idea, of a well regulated monomania. Three days after my return to Angers, my father sent me to Tours on some other business. I spent twenty-four hours there, and when I returned home, I learned that Madame d’Ionis had been there to have an understanding with my father about the consequences of her law suit. She had appeared to yield to positive reason; she had consented to gain it.