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When he woke, there was a new soft light of sanity in his eyes that was pathetic in the extreme.

“Monsieur,” he whispered, “the terror has passed.”

“God be thanked! Camille,” I answered, much moved.

He jerked his poor battered head in reverence.

“A little while,” he said, “and I shall know. The punishment was just.”

“What punishment, my poor Camille?”

“Hush! The cloud has rolled away. I stand naked before le bon Dieu. Monsieur, lift me up; I am strong.”

I winced as I complied. The palm of my hand was scorched and blistered in a dozen places. He noticed at once, and kissed and fondled the wounded limb as softly as a woman might.

“Ah, the poor hand!” he murmured. “Monsieur has touched the disc of fire.”

“Camille,” I whispered, “what is it?”

“Monsieur shall know–ah! yes, he shall know; but not now. Monsieur, my mother.”

“Thou art right, good son.”

I bound up his bruised forehead and my own burnt hand as well as I was able, and helped him to his feet. He stood upon them staggering; but in a minute could essay to stumble on the homeward journey with assistance. It was a long and toilsome progress; but in time we accomplished it. Often we had to sit down in the blasted woods and rest awhile; often moisten our parched mouths at the runnels of snow-water that thridded the undergrowth. The shadows were slanting eastwards as we reached the clearing we had quitted some hours earlier, and the goats had disappeared. Petitjean was leading his charges homewards in default of a human commander, and presently we overtook them browsingly loitering and desirous of definite instructions.

I pass over Camille’s meeting with his mother, and the wonder, and fear, and pity of it all. Our hurts were attended to, and the battery of questions met with the best armour of tact at command. For myself, I said that I had scorched my hand against a red-hot rock, which was strictly true; for Camille, that it were wisest to take no early advantage of the reason that God had restored to him. She was voluble, tearful, half-hysterical with joy and the ecstasy of gratitude.

“That a blow should effect the marvel! Monsieur, but it passes comprehension.”

All night long I heard her stirring and sobbing softly outside his door, for I slept little, owing to pain and the wonder in my mind. But towards morning I dozed, and my dreams were feverish and full of terror.

The next day Camille kept his bed and I my room. By this I at least escaped the first onset of local curiosity, for the villagers naturally made of Camille’s restoration a nine-days’ wonder. But towards evening Madame Barbiere brought a message from him that he would like to see Monsieur alone, if Monsieur would condescend to visit him in his room. I went at once, and found him, as Haydon found Keats, lying in a white bed, hectic, and on his back. He greeted me with a smile peculiarly sweet and restful.

“Does Monsieur wish to know?” he said in a low voice.

“If it will not hurt thee, Camille.”

“Not now–not now; the good God has made me sound. I remember, and am not terrified.”

I closed the door and took a seat by his bedside. There, with my hand shading my eyes from the level glory of sunset that flamed into the room, I listened to the strange tale of Camille’s seizure.

* * * * *

“Once, Monsieur, I lived in myself and was exultant with a loneliness of fancied knowledge. My youth was my excuse; but God could not pardon me all. I read where I could find books, and chance put an evil choice in my way, for I learned to sneer at His name, His heaven, His hell. Each man has his god in self-will, I thought in my pride, and through it alone he accepts the responsibility of life and death. He is his own curse or blessing here and hereafter, inheriting no sin and earning no doom but such as he himself inflicts upon himself. I interpret this from the world about me, and knowing it, I have no fear and own no tyrant but my own passions. Monsieur, it was through fear the most terrible that God asserted Himself to me.”