--"Mamma does not understand French very well."
--"No importa, Conchita;--le hablare en Espanol."
--"Bien, entonces!" she responded, with the same exquisite smile. "Adios, senor!" ...
But as she turned in going, his piercing eye discerned a little brown speck below the pretty lobe of her right ear,--just in the peachy curve between neck and cheek. ... His own little Zouzoune had a birthmark like that!---he remembered the faint pink trace left by his fingers above and below it the day he had slapped her for overturning his ink bottle ... "To laimin moin?---to batte moin!"
"Chita!---Chita!"
She did not hear ... After all, what a mistake he might have made! Were not Nature's coincidences more wonderful than fiction? Better to wait,--to question the mother first, and thus make sure.
Still--there were so many coincidences! The face, the smile, the eyes, the voice, the whole charm;---then that mark,---and the fair hair. Zouzoune had always resembled Adele so strangely!
That golden hair was a Scandinavian bequest to the Florane family;---the tall daughter of a Norwegian sea captain had once become the wife of a Florane. Viosca?---who ever knew a Viosca with such hair? Yet again, these Spanish emigrants sometimes married blonde German girls ... Might be a case of atavism, too.
Who was this Viosca? If that was his wife,---the little brown Carmen,---whence Chita's sunny hair? ...
And this was part of that same desolate shore whither the Last Island dead had been drifted by that tremendous surge! On a clear day, with a good glass, one might discern from here the long blue streak of that ghastly coast ... Somewhere--between here and there ... Merciful God! ...
But again! That bivouac-night before the fight at Chancellorsville, Laroussel had begun to tell him such a singular story ... Chance had brought them,--the old enemies,--together; made them dear friends in the face of Death. How little he had comprehended the man!---what a brave, true, simple soul went up that day to the Lord of Battles! ... What was it--that story about the little Creole girl saved from Last Island,--that story which was never finished? ... Eh! what a pain!
Evidently he had worked too much, slept too little. A decided case of nervous prostration. He must lie down, and try to sleep.
These pains in the head and back were becoming unbearable.
Nothing but rest could avail him now.
He stretched himself under the mosquito curtain. It was very still, breath. less, hot! The venomous insects were thick;---they filled the room with a continuous ebullient sound, as if invisible kettles were boiling overhead. A sign of storm.... Still, it was strange!---he could not perspire ...
Then it seemed to him that Laroussel was bending over him---Laroussel in his cavalry uniform. "Bon jour, camarade!---nous allons avoir un bien mauvais temps, mon pauvre Julien." How! bad weather?---"Comment un mauvais temps?" ...
He looked in Laroussel's face. There was something so singular in his smile. Ah! yes,---he remembered now: it was the wound!
"Un vilain temps!" whispered Laroussel. Then he was gone ... Whither?
---"Cheri!" ...
The whisper roused him with a fearful start ... Adele's whisper!
So she was wont to rouse him sometimes in the old sweet nights,--to crave some little attention for ailing Eulalie,---to make some little confidence she had forgotten to utter during the happy evening ... No, no! It was only the trees. The sky was clouding over. The wind was rising ... How his heart beat! how his temples pulsed! Why, this was fever! Such pains in the back and head!
Still his skin was dry,--dry as parchment,--burning. He rose up; and a bursting weight of pain at the base of the skull made him reel like a drunken man. He staggered to the little mirror nailed upon the wall, and looked. How his eyes glowed;---and there was blood in his mouth! He felt his pulse spasmodic, terribly rapid. Could it possibly---? ... No: this must be some pernicious malarial fever! The Creole does not easily fall a prey to the great tropical malady,---unless after a long absence in other climates. True! he had been four years in the army! But this was 1867 ... He hesitated a moment; then,--opening his medicine chest, he measured out and swallowed thirty grains of quinine.
Then he lay down again. His head pained more and more;---it seemed as if the cervical vertebrae were filled with fluid iron.
And still his skin remained dry as if tanned. Then the anguish grew so intense as to force a groan with almost every aspiration ... Nausea,--and the stinging bitterness of quinine rising in his throat;---dizziness, and a brutal wrenching within his stomach.
Everything began to look pink;---the light was rose-colored. It darkened more,---kindled with deepening tint. Something kept sparkling and spinning before his sight, like a firework ... Then a burst of blood mixed with chemical bitterness filled his mouth; the light became scarlet as claret ... This--this was ... not malaria ...
