Illnesses like Armand's have one fortunate thing about them: they either
kill outright or are very soon overcome. A fortnight after the events
which I have just related Armand was convalescent, and we had already
become great friends. During the whole course of his illness I had
hardly left his side.
Spring was profuse in its flowers, its leaves, its birds, its songs; and
my friend's window opened gaily upon his garden, from which a reviving
breath of health seemed to come to him. The doctor had allowed him to
get up, and we often sat talking at the open window, at the hour when
the sun is at its height, from twelve to two. I was careful not to refer
to Marguerite, fearing lest the name should awaken sad recollections
hidden under the apparent calm of the invalid; but Armand, on the
contrary, seemed to delight in speaking of her, not as formerly, with
tears in his eyes, but with a sweet smile which reassured me as to the
state of his mind.
I had noticed that ever since his last visit to the cemetery, and the
sight which had brought on so violent a crisis, sorrow seemed to have
been overcome by sickness, and Marguerite's death no longer appeared to
him under its former aspect. A kind of consolation had sprung from the
certainty of which he was now fully persuaded, and in order to banish
the sombre picture which often presented itself to him, he returned
upon the happy recollections of his liaison with Marguerite, and seemed
resolved to think of nothing else.
The body was too much weakened by the attack of fever, and even by
the process of its cure, to permit him any violent emotions, and the
universal joy of spring which wrapped him round carried his thoughts
instinctively to images of joy. He had always obstinately refused to
tell his family of the danger which he had been in, and when he was well
again his father did not even know that he had been ill.
One evening we had sat at the window later than usual; the weather had
been superb, and the sun sank to sleep in a twilight dazzling with gold
and azure. Though we were in Paris, the verdure which surrounded us
seemed to shut us off from the world, and our conversation was only now
and again disturbed by the sound of a passing vehicle.
"It was about this time of the year, on the evening of a day like this,
that I first met Marguerite," said Armand to me, as if he were listening
to his own thoughts rather than to what I was saying. I did not answer.
Then turning toward me, he said: "I must tell you the whole story; you will make a book out of it; no one
will believe it, but it will perhaps be interesting to do."