Evariste Gamelin was worn out and could not rest; twenty times in thenight he would awake with a start from a sleep haunted by nightmares. Itwas only in the blue chamber, in Elodie's arms, that he could snatch afew hours' slumber. He talked and cried out in his sleep and used oftento awake her; but she could make nothing of what he said.
One morning, after a night when he had seen the Eumenides, he startedawake, broken with terror and weak as a child. The dawn was piercing thewindow curtains with its wan arrows. Evariste's hair, lying tangled onhis brow, covered his eyes with a black veil; Elodie, by the bedside,was gently parting the wild locks. She was looking at him now, with asister's tenderness, while with her handkerchief she wiped away the icysweat from the unhappy man's forehead. Then he remembered that finescene in the _Orestes_ of Euripides, which he had essayed to representin a picture that, if he could have finished it, would have been hismasterpiece--the scene where the unhappy Electra wipes away the spumethat sullies her brother's lips. And he seemed to hear Elodie alsosaying in a gentle voice:
"Hear me, beloved brother, while the Furies leave you master of yourreason ..."
And he thought:
"And yet I am no parricide. Far from it, it is filial piety has made meshed the tainted blood of the enemies of my fatherland."