The intendant, therefore, took his place in the castle's home. He saw him return to health in the early days of his marriage, he saw him later wither and fall lower than he had ever been. He was not without guessing in much of the causes of this relapse, and if Diane's calculations escaped him, he understood at least that Mr. de Séry, sick and in his fifties, was behaving in his household as if he were twenty years old. A brother, a relative, a friend, would think he could afford observations, advice; Lami remained in his role as steward and said nothing. Why this reserve and this discretion on the part of a man who was not usually very reserved, when, perhaps for the first time, he would have had the right to be indiscreet? Why betray indirectly, through his silence, this master who fulfi
