Octave is half mad, and Heaven knows what will become of him.'" The Count, from the depths of his armchair, listened without apparent emotion to this terrible revelation.

He was quite crushed, and was searching for some means to exorcise the green spectre of the past, which had so suddenly confronted him.

Mascarin never took his eyes off him.

All at once the Count roused himself from his prostration, as a man awakes from a hideous dream.

"This is sheer folly," cried he.
"It is folly," answered Mascarin, "that would carry much weight with it." "And suppose I were to show you," returned the Count, "that all these entries are the offspring of a diseased mind ?" Mascarin shook his head with an air of affected grief.