"Can Monsieur Taillefer be—" I began.
"—dead?" said my sarcastic neighbor. "You would wear the gayest mourning, I fancy!"
"But what has happened to him?"
"The poor dear man," said the mistress of the house, "is subject to attacks of a disease the name of which I never can remember, though Monsieur Brousson has often told it to me; and he has just been seized with one."
"What is the nature of the disease?" asked an examining-judge.
"Oh, it is something terrible, monsieur," she replied. "The doctors know no remedy. It causes the most dreadful suffering. One day, while the unfortunate man was staying at my country-house, he had an attack, and I was obliged to go away and stay with a neighbor to avoid hearing him; his cries were terrible; he tried to kill himself; his daughter was obliged
