"Oh! Michel, it would be impossible for me to tell you to-day what took place within me during the two or three minutes that that woman lay stretched out like a dead woman before my eyes, with her lips as white and dry as pure wax, her eyes half-open, but strange and expressionless, her dark hair falling over her brow on which the cold perspiration stood in beads, and all that exquisite, refined beauty, above all comparison in my thought. It was not the intoxicating flame of a gross animal passion that was kindled in my plebeian blood. It was adoration, as pure and timid and refined and mysterious as the being who inspired it. I felt an irresistible longing to prostrate myself at the feet of a dead and gone martyr, for I thought that she was dead, and it seemed as if my soul were ready to leave the earth with hers. "I dared not touch her; I did not know what to do to restore her. I had no voice with which to call for help. I was motionless in my perplexity, as one is when struggling violently in a horrible dream. At last a phial fell under my hand, I know not how. She recovered consciousness little by little, looked at me without seeing me, not understanding or seeking to understand who I could be. At last she raised herself on her elbow and seemed to be collecting her thoughts. "'Who are you, my friend?' she said, seeing me on my knees by her side, 'and what do you want? You seem to feel very sorrowful.' "'Ah! yes, your highness, God is my witness that I am very unhappy to have frightened you so.' "'You did not frighten me,' she said, with an evident embarrassment which astonished me. 'Did I cry out?--Ah! yes,' she continued, with a shudder, yielding once more to an impulse of distrust or alarm.--'I was asleep; you came in; you frightened me. I do not like to be surprised in that way. But did I say anything unkind to you, that you weep?' "'No, your highness,' I replied; 'you fainted, and I would rather have died than have caused you this discomfort.' "'Am I alone here, pray?' she cried in a tone of distress that tore my heart. 'Can anybody who pleases enter my apartments and insult me?'--She rose and ran to her bell-rope. She seemed desperate--beside herself. Her words and her excitement had affected me so painfully that it did not occur to me to fly. And yet, if she had rung--if anyone had come--I should have been treated like a criminal. But she stopped, and the expression of her face told me the truth at once concerning her disposition.