Military life in Italy : sketches - Societa italiana di storia militare

CARMELA. 171
more this cursed and obstinate fever raged in my heart. . . .
I cannot sleep at night, because I know that she is already
curled up before my door, and tortured as I am continually by
this idea, it seems as if I ought to hear from one moment to
the other, another tapping on the glass, and see appear above
my window-sill that distorted face, and have those two motionless,
staring eyes fastened upon mine ! Sometimes I seem to
hear her coming up the stairs, and I spring up in my bed, or I
fancy I hear down in the square a burst of laughter, and that
laugh produces the effect of an icy hand laid on my heart ;
but I have not the courage to look out of the window. I begin
to read, to write, yet my mind, always fixed upon her, is
sad, disquieted, almost fearful, I know not why. Then I ask
myself when this agonizing life will end, and how what trace
;
of it will remain in my heart. I do not dare reply, I am afraid
of my answer, and I dash my hands into my
hair . . . like
one desperate. ... Oh, friend ! tell me that I shall not
go mad too, because I feel that my heart is breaking and I
cannot bear this life ... I cannot . . . cannot bear
it!"
Then he stretched out his hand to seize that of the doctor ;
the latter drew his chair nearer, and being so moved that he
could not utter one word, he placed both hands on his
shoulders, looked at him an instant, and then embraced him.
All at once the officer exclaimed with a suddenly quiet face :
" If she could become what she once was, if she could regain
her reason and the heart she then possessed, and those eyes
should lose forever that strange light, that fixed expression
which is so frightful ;
her mouth never give again that horrible
laugh, and one day she should '
say sanely I thank : thee, I