"It's acute pneumonia in its classic form," he said, raising from his proofs his broad face, surrounded by a reddish beard, to which a pair of gold-bowed spectacles imparted the expression of a German scholar. "A cold contracted by imprudence, fatigue for several days, lame back, headache. Then the peculiar chill, so characteristic of the disease, that cry of agony of the whole organism attacked, and, immediately after, thirty-nine degrees of fever. That's the first day. The second, a hundred and ten pulsations a minute, and forty respirations, instead of fourteen or eighteen. Last night, delirium. This evening or to-morrow, judgment will be pronounced on the pneumonia, and I fear it will be very harsh, considering the patient's age." "Do you think that he will still know me?" asked Landri. "Joseph used the word madness." "Joseph doesn't know what that word means," interposed the physician abruptly, with a shrug of the shoulders which was not far from signifying, "Nor you, either."--"I myself," he continued, "used almost the same word, which one should never do. It was not delirium that Monsieur Jaubourg had last night, it was subdelirium. The upper parts of the brain were under the influence of toxins, and the others, the unconscious parts, were free and wandering. It's a sort of poisoning peculiar to pneumonia, and which sometimes indicates its coming. It is very analogous to alcoholic poisoning. It manifests itself by a dream which expresses itself in speech and is incoherent to us. Probably, if we knew the past life of a person intoxicated in this way, we should discover that his incoherence is logical and true. Most frequently, he lives over past events. It's a phenomenon that has been carefully observed. We have given it one of those names of which society folk make sport, I know, I know. Since Molière's time we are used to such sarcasms. We call it an _ecmnésique_ state, when the depths of the memory come to the surface, as we call this delirious dream _onirique_. Why does a certain microbe produce this effect when it attacks the meninges? This problem would lead us on to define what the mind is, and it is probable that you and I would not agree!--But let us drop this, which is scarcely interesting to you. I wanted simply to explain to you that Monsieur Jaubourg has never been mad, and that he has all his wits this morning. You can see him. Not for very long, and don't tire him."