“A doctor never gives up a patient, or at least if he does so, he still trusts to the possibility of nature mercifully interfering on the patient’s behalf; a clot may form and stop the hemorrhage; a cough may disturb the clot, and the patient bleed to death.” “You think then that it is my duty to prepare the poor young man for death,” asked the curate. “I think,” answered the doctor, shrugging his shoulders, “you would do better to leave him alone; in the first place because he is, at present, in a drowsy condition and cannot hear what you say; later on, because he will be delirious, and unable to understand you.” But the doctor was mistaken; the wounded man, drowsy as he was, overheard this conversation, more re-assuring as regards the salvation of his soul than the recovery of his body. How many things people say in the presence of sick persons, believing that they cannot hear, while all the while, they are taking in every word! In the present case, this extra acuteness of hearing may perhaps have been due to the fact that it was Thibault’s soul which was awake in Raoul’s body; if the soul belonging to it had been in this body, it would probably have succumbed more entirely to the effects of the wound. The doctor now dressed the wound in the back, but left the front wound uncovered, merely directing that a piece of linen soaked in iced water should be kept over it. Then, having poured some drops of a sedative into a glass of water, and telling the priest to give this to the patient whenever he asked for drink, the doctor departed, saying that he would come again the following morning, but that he much feared he should take his journey for nothing. Thibault would have liked to put in a word of his own, and to say himself what he thought about his condition, but his spirit was as if imprisoned in this dying body, and, against his will, was forced to submit to lying thus within its cell. But he could still hear the priest, who not only spoke to him, but endeavoured by shaking him to arouse him from his lethargy. Thibault found this very fatiguing, and it was lucky for the priest that the wounded man, just now, had no superhuman power, for he inwardly sent the good man to the devil, many times over. Before long it seemed to him that some sort of hot burning pan was being inserted under the soles of his feet, his loins, his head; his blood began to circulate, then to boil, like water over a fire. His ideas became confused, his clenched jaws opened; his tongue which had been bound became loosened; some disconnected words escaped him. “Ah, ah!” he thought to himself, “this no doubt is what the good doctor spoke about as delirium;” and, for the while at least, this was his last lucid idea.