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58 "So that his fortune can remain in your hands. You want to be rich. You don't like having worked so long without making a fortune. You think it's your turn now?"

M. Morlot did not answer. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor. He asked himself if he were not having a bad dream, and tried to make out what was real in this experience of pinioned hands, cross-examinations; and questions from a stranger who read his conscience like an open book.

"Does he hear voices?" asked M. Auvray.

The poor uncle felt his hair stand on end. He remembered that persistent little voice which kept whispering in his ear, and he answered mechanically: "Sometimes."

"Ah! he has hallucinations?"

"No, no! I'm not ill; let me go. I'll lose my senses here. Ask all my friends; they'll tell you that I'm in full possession of my faculties. Feel my pulse; you'll see that I've no fever."

"Poor uncle!" said François. "He does n't know that insanity is madness without fever."

"Monsieur," added the doctor, "if we could only give our patients fever, we'd cure them all."

M. Morlot threw himself on the sofa; his nephew continued to pace the doctor's study.

"Monsieur," said François, "I am deeply afflicted by my uncle's misfortune, but it is a great consolation to be able to entrust him to