Several people passed me but, seized with
sudden distrust, I would not stop them and ask my way. I have since
realized that I was then in a burning fever and already nearly
delirious. Finally, just as I reached a large thoroughfare, I became
giddy and fell heavily upon the pavement.
Here there is a blank in my life. For three whole weeks I remained
unconscious. When I awoke at last I found myself in a strange room.
A man who was nursing me told me quietly that he had picked me up one
morning on the Boulevard Montparnasse and had brought me to his house.
He was an old doctor who had given up practicing.
When I attempted to thank him he sharply answered that my case had
seemed a curious one and that he had wished to study it. Moreover,
during the first days of my convalescence he would not allow me to ask
a single question, and later on he never put one to me. For eight days
longer I remained in bed, feeling very weak and not even trying to
remember, for memory was a weariness and a pain. I felt half ashamed and
half afraid. As soon as I could leave the house I would go and find out
whatever I wanted to know. Possibly in the delirium of fever a name had
escaped me; however, the doctor never alluded to anything I may have
said.
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