The Joy of Life [La joie de vivre]

'No, he isn't here. He hasn't come back yet,' Pauline replied.

At this Louise broke out angrily:

'I knew quite well that we shouldn't see him again till this evening, even if he condescends to come back then. He stayed away all night in spite of his express promise. Ah! he's a nice fellow. When he once gets to Caen, there's no getting him away from it!'

'He has so few amusements,' Pauline gently urged. 'And then this business about the manure would keep him some time. No doubt he will take advantage of the Doctor's gig, and come back in it.'

Since Lazare and Louise had settled down at Bonneville they had lived a life of perpetual misunderstanding and bickering. There were no open quarrels between them, but constant signs of ill-temper, the lives of both being rendered unhappy by want of harmony. Louise, after a long and painful convalescence, was now leading an empty, aimless existence, manifesting the greatest distaste for domestic matters, and spending her time in novel-reading and protracted toilets. Lazare had again fallen a prey to overwhelming ennui; he never opened a book, but spent his time in gazing abstractedly at the sea, just escaping to Caen at long intervals, though only to return home more weary than ever. Pauline, who had been obliged to retain the management of the house, had become quite indispensable to them, for she patched up their quarrels several times a day.

'Be quick and finish dressing!' added the girl. 'The Abbé will be here directly, and you must come and sit with him and my uncle. I have too much to do myself.'

But Louise could not rid herself of her rancour.

'How can he do it? Keeping away from home all this time! My father wrote to me yesterday and told me that the remainder of our money would go the same way as the rest.'

Lazare had, indeed, allowed himself to be swindled in a couple of unfortunate speculations, and Pauline had become so anxious on the child's account that, as his godmother, she had made him a present of two-thirds of what she still possessed, taking out in his name a policy which would assure him a hundred thousand francs on the day he reached his majority. She now had only an income of five hundred francs herself, but her sole regret in the matter was the necessity she was under of curtailing her customary charities.

'A fine speculation that manure business is!' Louise continued. 'I am sure my father will have made him give it up, and he's only stopping away to amuse himself. Oh, well! I don't care! He may be as dissolute as he likes!'

'Then what are you getting so angry for?' Pauline retorted. 'But you know that's all nonsense; the poor fellow never thinks of anything wrong. Do hurry down, won't you? What can have happened to Véronique, I wonder, that she should disappear in this way on a Saturday, and leave me all her work to do?'

In fact, a most extraordinary thing had happened—one which had been puzzling the whole house since two o'clock. Véronique had prepared the vegetables for the stew, and plucked and trussed a duck; and then she had disappeared as suddenly and completely as if the earth had swallowed her up. Pauline, quite astounded by this sudden disappearance, had at last resolved to undertake the cooking of the stew herself.

'She hasn't come back, then?' asked Louise, recovering from her anger.

'No, indeed!' Pauline replied. 'Do you know what I am beginning to think? She bought the duck for forty sous of a woman who happened to be passing, and I remember telling her that I had seen much finer ones for thirty sous at Verchemont. She tossed her head directly, and gave me one of her surly looks. Well, I'll be bound that she has gone to Verchemont to see if I wasn't telling a lie.'

She smiled, but there was a touch of sadness in her smile, for the surliness which Véronique was again manifesting pained her. The servant's gradually increasing ill-will against Pauline since Madame Chanteau's death had now brought her back to the virulence of the very early days.

'We've none of us been able to get a word out of her for a week or more,' said Louise. 'Any sort of folly may be expected from a person with such a disposition.'

'Well,' said Pauline charitably, 'we must excuse her whims. She is sure to come back again, and we shan't die of hunger this time.'

But the baby now began to move about on the rug, and she ran up and bent over it.

'Well! what is it, my dear?'

The mother, who was still at the window, glanced out for a moment and then disappeared within the room. Chanteau, quite absorbed in his own reflections, just turned his head as Loulou began to bark, and then called out to his niece:

'Here are your visitors, Pauline!'

Two ragged young urchins, the advanced guard of the troop which she received every Saturday, now came up. Little Paul had quickly dropped off to sleep once more, and she rose and said:

'It's a nice time for them to come! I haven't a minute to spare. Well, never mind; stay, since you're here. Sit down on the bench. And, uncle, if any more of them come, please make them sit down by the side of these. I must just go and glance at my stew.'

When she returned, at the end of a quarter of an hour, two boys and two girls were already seated on the bench; they were some of her little beggars of former days, but had now grown much bigger, though they still retained their mendicant habits.

Never before had there been so much distress in Bonneville. During the storms in May the three remaining houses had been crushed against the cliffs. The destruction was now complete; the flood-tides had made a clean sweep of the village after centuries of attack, during which the sea had each year devoured one or another part of the place. On the shingle one now only saw the conquering waves, which effaced even all trace of the ruins. The fishermen, expelled from the nook where for generation after generation they had obstinately persisted in struggling against the ceaseless onslaught, had been compelled to migrate further up the ravine, where they were camping in companies. The richer ones had built cabins for themselves, while the poorer ones were taking refuge under rocks, all combining to found a new Bonneville, from which their descendants would in turn be ejected after fresh centuries of contest. Before it could complete its work of destruction, the sea had found it necessary to sweep the piles and stockades away. On the day of their overthrow the wind had blown from the north, and such huge mountains of water had dashed up that the church itself had been shaken by the violence with which they broke against the shore. Lazare, though he was told of what was happening, would not go down. He had remained on the terrace, watching the waves sweep up, while the fishermen rushed off to view the desperate onslaught. They were thrilled with mingled pride and awe. Ah! how the hussy was howling! Now she was going to make a clean sweep of it all! And in less than twenty minutes, indeed, everything had disappeared, the stockades were broken down, and the timbers were smashed into matchwood. And the fishermen roared with the waves, and gesticulated and danced like so many savages, intoxicated by the wind and the sea, and glutting themselves with the sight of all that destruction. Then, while Lazare angrily shook his fist at them, they had fled for their lives, closely pursued by the wild rush of the waves, which nothing more held in check. Now they were perishing of starvation, and groaning as of old in their new Bonneville, accusing the hussy of their ruin and commending themselves to the charity of the 'kind young lady.'

'What are you doing there?' cried Pauline, as she saw Houtelard's son. 'I forbade you ever to come here again!'

He was a great strapping fellow, now nearly twenty years old. His former sad and timid expression, that told of bad treatment at home, had turned into a sly, crafty look. He lowered his eyes as he replied:

'Please take pity upon us, Mademoiselle Pauline. We are so miserable and wretched now that father is dead!'

Houtelard had gone off to sea one stormy evening and had never returned. His body had never been found, nor had that of his mate, nor even a single plank of their boat. Pauline, however, obliged as she was to exercise strict supervision over her charities, had sworn that she would never give a single sou to either son or widow, for they lived together in open shame.

'You know quite well why I won't have you coming here,' Pauline replied. 'When you behave differently, I will see what I can do for you.'

Thereupon the young fellow began to plead his cause in a whining voice: 'It is all her fault; she brought it about. She would have gone on beating me otherwise. Please give us a trifle, kind young lady. We have lost everything. I could get on well enough myself, but it is for her that I'm asking you, and she is very ill—indeed she is; I swear it.'

Pauline ended by taking pity on him and sending him away with a loaf of bread and some stew; and she even promised to call on the sick woman and take her some medicine.

'Medicine, indeed!' muttered Chanteau. 'Just you try to get her to swallow it!'

But Pauline had already turned her attention to the Prouane girl, one of whose cheeks was gashed.

'How have you managed to do that?'

'I fell against a tree, Mademoiselle Pauline.'

'Against a tree? It looks more like a cut from the corner of a table.'

She was a big girl now, with prominent cheek-bones, but she still had the great haggard eyes of a weak-witted child, and she made vain efforts to remain standing in a respectful attitude. Her legs shook under her, and she could scarcely articulate her words.

'Why! you have been drinking, you wicked girl!' cried Pauline, scrutinizing her keenly.

'Oh, Mademoiselle! how can you say so?'

'You were drunk and you fell down! Isn't it so? I know very well what you are all given to. Sit down, and I will go and get some arnica and a bandage.'

She attended to the girl's cheek, and tried to make her feel ashamed of herself. It was disgraceful, she told her, for a girl of her age to intoxicate herself with her father and mother, a couple of drunkards who would be found dead some morning, poisoned by calvados. The girl listened drowsily, and when her cheek was bandaged she stammered out:

'Father is always complaining of pains, and I could rub him well if you would give me a little camphorated brandy.'

Neither Pauline nor Chanteau could keep from laughing.

'No, no! I know very well what would become of the brandy. I will give you a loaf, though I'm afraid you will go and sell it and spend the money in drink. Stay where you are, and Cuche shall take you home.'

Young Cuche got up from the bench in his turn. His feet were bare; indeed, the only clothes he wore were some old breeches and a ragged shirt, through which showed parts of his skin, browned by the sun and torn by brambles. He was to be met running about the high-roads, leaping over hedges with the agility of a wolf, living like a savage, to whom hunger makes every sort of prey acceptable. He had reached the lowest depths of misery and destitution, such an abyss of wretchedness that Pauline looked at him with remorse, as though she felt guilty for allowing a human being to go on living in such a state. But whenever she had attempted to rescue him, he had always fled, hating all thought of work or service.

'Since you have come here again,' she said to him gently, 'I suppose you have thought over what I said to you last Saturday. I hope that your return here is a sign that you are not lost to all sense of what is right. You cannot go on leading your present vagabond life; I am no longer as rich as I was, and I cannot support you in idleness. Have you made up your mind to accept my offer?'

Since the loss of her fortune Pauline had tried to make up for her lack of money by interesting other charitable people in her pensioners. Doctor Cazenove had at last succeeded in obtaining the admission of Cuche's mother into the hospital for incurables at Bayeux, and Pauline herself held in reserve a sum of one hundred francs to provide an outfit for the son, for whom she had found a berth among the workmen employed on the railway line to Cherbourg. He bent his head as she spoke, and listened to her with an expression of distrust.

'It's quite settled, isn't it?' she continued. 'You will accompany your mother, and then you will go to your post.'

But as she stepped towards him he sprang back. His eyes, though downcast, never left her, and he seemed to think that she was going to seize him by his wrists.

'What is the matter?' she asked in surprise.

Then, with a wild animal's uneasy glance, the lad murmured: 'You are going to take me and shut me up. I don't want to go.'

All further attempts at persuasion were useless. He let her continue talking, and appeared to admit the force of her reasoning; but as soon as ever she moved he sprang towards the gate, and with an obstinate shake of the head refused her offers for his mother and for himself, preferring freedom and starvation.

'Take yourself off, you lazy impostor!' Chanteau cried at last in indignation. 'It is kindness thrown away, troubling one's self about such a vagabond.'

Pauline's hands trembled as she thought of her wasted charity, her failure to effect anything for this lad, who insisted on remaining in misery.

'No, no! uncle,' she said, with an expression of despairing tolerance, 'they are starving, and they must have some food in spite of everything.'

She called Cuche back to her to give him, as on other Saturdays, a loaf of bread and forty sous. But he backed away from her, saying:

'Put it down on the ground and go away, and I will come and pick it up.'

She did as he told her. Then he cautiously stepped forward, casting suspicious glances around him. As soon as he had picked up the forty sous and the loaf he ran off as fast as his bare feet could carry him.

'The wild beast!' cried Chanteau. 'He will come and murder us all one of these nights. It's just like that little gaol-bird's daughter there. I would swear it was she who stole my silk handkerchief the other day.'

He was speaking of the Tourmal girl, whose grandfather had lately joined her father in gaol. She was now the only one who was left on the bench with the little Prouane, who was stupefied with drink. She got up, without any sign that she had heard the charge of theft brought against her, and she began to whine: 'Have pity upon us, kind young lady! There is nobody but mother and me at home now. The gendarmes come and beat us every night. My body is all one big bruise, and mother is dying. Oh! kind young lady, do give us some money and some good meat-soup and some wine——'

Chanteau, quite exasperated by the girl's string of lies, moved restlessly in his chair, but Pauline would have given the chemise off her back.

'There! there! That will do,' she muttered. 'You would get more if you talked less. Stay where you are, and I will make up a basket for you.'

When she came back, bringing with her an old fish-hamper, in which she had put a loaf, two litre-bottles of wine, and some meat, she found another of her pensioners on the terrace, the Gonin girl, who had brought her child with her, a girl now some twenty months old. The mother, who was sixteen years of age, was so fragile and slight of figure that she seemed more like the child's elder sister. She was scarcely able to carry the infant, but she nevertheless brought it to the house, as she knew that Mademoiselle Pauline was very fond of children and could refuse them nothing.

'Good gracious! How heavy she is!' cried Pauline, as she took the child in her arms. 'And to think that she is not six months older than our Paul!'

Despite herself, her eyes turned sadly towards the little boy, who was still lying asleep upon the rug. However, the young mother began to complain:

'If you only knew how much she eats, Mademoiselle Pauline! And I've no bed-linen, and nothing to dress her with. And then, since father is dead, mother and the other one are always ill-using me. They treat me like the lowest of the low, and say that if I have a baby I ought to provide what it costs to keep it.'

'Poor little thing!' Pauline murmured. 'I am knitting her some socks. You must bring her to see me oftener; there is always milk here, and she might have a few spoonfuls of gruel. I will go and see your mother, and I'll try to frighten her, as she still behaves unkindly to you.'

The girl took up her daughter again, while Pauline began to prepare a parcel.

However, Abbé Horteur now appeared upon the terrace.

'Here come Monsieur Lazare and the Doctor,' he announced.

At the same moment they heard the wheels of the gig, and while Martin, the ex-sailor with the wooden leg, was leading the horse to the stable, Cazenove came round from the yard, crying:

'I am bringing you back the rake who stopped away from home all night. You won't be very hard on him, I hope!'

Lazare now appeared, smiling feebly. He was quickly ageing; his shoulders were bent and his face was cadaverous, devastated by the mental anguish which was destroying him. He was no doubt on the point of explaining the reason of his delay when the window of the first floor, which had remained open, was violently closed.

'Louise hasn't quite finished dressing yet,' Pauline explained. 'She will be down in a minute or two.'

They all looked at one another, and there was a feeling of embarrassment. That angry banging of the window portended a quarrel. After taking a step or two towards the stairs, Lazare checked himself and determined to wait where he was. He kissed his father and little Paul; and then, to conceal his disquietude, he tackled his cousin, saying to her in a querulous voice:

'Rid us of all this vermin! You know I can't bear to see them anywhere near me.'

He was referring to the three girls who were still on the bench. Pauline hastened to tie up the parcel which she had made for the Gonin girl.

'There! you can go now,' she said. 'You two just take your companion home, and mind she doesn't fall any more. And, you, look well after your baby, and try not to forget it or leave it anywhere on the road.'

As they were at last setting off Lazare insisted upon examining the Tourmal girl's hamper. She had already contrived to stow away in it an old coffee-pot, which had been thrown aside in a corner and which she had managed to steal. Then all three of the little hussies were driven away, the young drunkard tottering along between the two others.

'What a dreadful lot they are!' exclaimed the priest, sitting down by Chanteau's side. 'God has certainly abandoned them. Some have children directly after their first Communion, and others take to drinking and thieving like their parents. Ah, well! I've warned them of what will happen to them some day!'

'I say, my dear fellow,' then began the Doctor, addressing Lazare in an ironical tone, 'are you thinking of building those famous stockades of yours over again?'

Lazare made an angry gesture. Any allusion to his defeat in his struggle with the sea exasperated him.

'No indeed!' he cried. 'I would let the sea sweep into our own house, without even putting a broom-handle across the road to stay its course. No, no! indeed. I've been very foolish as it is, but one doesn't commit that kind of folly again. I actually saw those scoundrels dancing with delight on the day of the catastrophe! Do you know what I begin to think? I feel sure they had sawn through the beams on the day before the flood-tide, for they would never have given way as they did if they had not been tampered with.'

He tried in this way to salve his wounded pride as an engineer. Then, stretching his hand towards Bonneville, he added:

'Let them all go to smash! I will take my turn at dancing then!'

'Don't say such wicked things!' Pauline observed in her quiet manner. 'Only the poor may be excused for being wicked. You ought to build up the stockade again in spite of everything.'

Lazare had already calmed down, as though his last burst of passion had exhausted him.

'No, no!' he muttered, 'it would bore me too much. But you are right; there is nothing for one to make oneself angry about. Whether they're drowned or not, what does it matter to me?'

Silence fell again. Chanteau had fallen back into a posture of dolorous immobility after raising his head to receive his son's kiss. The priest was twirling his thumbs, and the Doctor paced about, with his hands behind his back. They all began to look at little Paul, whom Pauline defended even from his father's caresses, to prevent him from being wakened. Since the others had come she had begged them to lower their voices and not to tread so heavily about the rug, and she now shook a whip at Loulou, who still continued to growl at the noise he had heard when the horse was led to the stable.

'You don't suppose that that will quiet him, do you?' said Lazare. 'He'll make that row for an hour. He's the most disagreeable brute I ever came across. He begins to snarl directly one moves, and one might as well be without a dog at all, he is so completely absorbed in himself. The only good the sulky beast does is to make us regret our poor old Matthew.'

'How old is Minouche now?' Cazenove inquired. 'I have seen her about here as long as I can remember.'

'She is turned sixteen,' Pauline answered, 'and she keeps very well yet.'

Minouche, who was still at her toilet on the dining-room window-sill, raised her head as the Doctor pronounced her name. For a moment she held her foot suspended in the air, then again began to lick her fur delicately.

'She isn't deaf yet, you see,' Pauline said; 'but I fancy her sight is not so good as it was. It is scarcely a week ago since seven kittens of hers were drowned. It is really quite terrible to think of the number she has had during the last sixteen years. If they had all been allowed to live they would have eaten up the whole neighbourhood.'

'Well, well, she at any rate keeps neat and clean,' said the priest, glancing at Minouche as she continued washing herself with her tongue.

Chanteau, who, like the others, was looking towards the cat, now began to moan more loudly with that incessant involuntary expression of pain which had become so habitual to him that he had grown unconscious of it.

'Are you feeling worse?' the Doctor asked him.

'Eh? What? Why do you ask?' he said, suddenly seeming to awake. 'Ah, it's because I'm breathing heavily. Yes, I am in great pain this evening. I thought that the sun would do me good, but I feel as though I were being suffocated, and I haven't a joint that isn't burning.'

Cazenove examined his hands. They all shuddered at the sight of those poor deformed stumps. The priest made another of his sensible remarks.

'Such fingers as those are not adapted for playing draughts. That's an amusement which you can't have now.'

'Be very careful about what you eat and drink,' the Doctor urged. 'Your elbow is highly inflamed, and the ulceration is increasing.'

'How can I be more careful than I am?' Chanteau wailed hopelessly. 'My wine is all measured out and my meat is weighed! Must I give up taking anything at all? Indeed, it isn't living to go on like this, and one might as well die at once. I can't eat even without assistance—how is it likely with such things as these at the end of my arms?—and you may be quite sure that Pauline, who feeds me, takes care that I don't get anything that I oughtn't to have.'

The girl smiled.

'Ah! yes, indeed,' she said, 'you ate too much yesterday. It was my fault, but I couldn't refuse when I saw how your appetite was distressing you.'

At this they all pretended to grow merry, and began to tease him about the junketings in which they declared he still indulged. But their voices trembled with pity as they glanced at that remnant of a man, that inert mass of flesh, which now only lived enough to suffer. He had fallen back into his usual position, with his body leaning to the right and his hands lying on his knees.

'This evening now, for instance,' Pauline continued, 'we are going to have a roast duck——'

But she suddenly checked herself to ask:

'By the way, did you see anything of Véronique as you came through Verchemont?'

Then she told Lazare and the Doctor the story of Véronique's disappearance. Neither of them had seen anything of her. They expressed some astonishment at the woman's strange whims, and ended by growing merry over the subject. It would be a fine sight, they said, to see her face when she came back and found them already round the table with the dinner cooked and served.

'I must leave you now,' said Pauline gaily, 'for I have to attend to the kitchen. If I let the stew get burnt, or serve the duck underdone, my uncle will give me notice!'

Abbé Horteur broke out into a loud laugh, and even Doctor Cazenove himself seemed tickled at the idea, when the window on the first floor was suddenly thrown open with a tremendous clatter. Louise did not show herself, but merely called in a sharp voice:

'Come upstairs, Lazare!'

At first Lazare seemed inclined to rebel and to refuse obedience to a command given in such a voice. But Pauline, anxious to avoid a scene before visitors, gave him an entreating look, and he went off to the house, while his cousin remained for a moment or two longer on the terrace to do what she could to dissipate the awkwardness of the situation. No one spoke, and they all looked at the sea in embarrassment. The westering sun was now casting a sheet of gold over it, crowning the little blue waves with quivering fires. Far away in the distance the horizon was changing to a soft lilac hue. The lovely day was drawing towards its close in perfect serenity, and not a cloud or a sail flecked the infinite stretch of sky and sea.

'Well, as he never came home last night,' Pauline at last ventured to say with a smile, 'I suppose it is necessary to lecture him a little.'

The Doctor looked at her, and on his face also appeared a smile, in which Pauline could read his prediction of former days, when he had told her that she wasn't making them a very desirable present in bestowing them on one another. And at this she walked away towards the kitchen.

'Well, I must really leave you now,' she said. 'Try to amuse yourselves. Call for me, uncle, if Paul wakes up again.'

In the kitchen, when she had stirred the stew and got the spit ready, she knocked the pots and pans about impatiently. The voices of Louise and Lazare reached her more and more distinctly through the ceiling, and she grew distressed as she thought that they would certainly be heard on the terrace. It was very absurd of them, she said to herself, to go on shouting as though they were both deaf, and letting everybody know of their disagreements. But she did not care to go up to them, partly because she had to get the dinner ready, and partly because she felt ill at ease at the thought of interfering with them in their own room. It was generally downstairs, amid the common life of the family, that she played her part of reconciler.

She went into the dining-room for a few moments and busied herself with laying the table. But the shouting still continued, and she could no longer bear the thought that they were making themselves unhappy. So, impelled by that spirit of active charity which made the happiness of others the chief thought of her life, she at last went upstairs.

'My dear children,' she exclaimed, as she abruptly entered the room, 'I daresay you will tell me it is no business of mine, but you are really making too much noise. It is very foolish of you to excite yourselves in this way and disturb the whole house.'

She had hastily stepped across the room, and at once closed the window, which Louise had left open. Fortunately neither the priest nor the Doctor had remained on the terrace. With one quick glance she had seen that there was nobody there except the drowsing Chanteau and little Paul, who was still asleep.

'We could hear you out there as plainly as if you had been in the dining-room,' she resumed. 'Come, now, what is the matter this time?'

But, their tempers aroused, they continued quarrelling without taking any notice of Pauline. She now stood there, still and silent, feeling ill at ease again in that room. The yellow cretonne with its green pattern, the old mahogany furniture and the red carpet, had been replaced by heavy woollen hangings and furniture more in harmony with Louise's delicacy of taste. There was nothing left to remind one of the dead mother. A scent of heliotrope arose from the toilet-table, on which lay some damp towels, and the perfume somewhat oppressed Pauline. She involuntarily glanced round the room, in which every object spoke of the familiar life of husband and wife. Though, as her rebellious thoughts calmed down, she had at last prevailed upon herself to continue living with them, she had never previously entered their room, where all things suggested conjugal privacy. And thus she quivered almost with the jealousy of former times.

'How can you make each other so unhappy?' she murmured, after a short interval of silence. 'Won't you ever be sensible?'

'Well, no, I've had quite enough of it!' cried Louise. 'Do you think he will ever allow that he is in the wrong? I merely told him how uneasy he had made us all by not coming home last night, and then he flew at me like a wild beast and accused me of having ruined his life, and threatened that he would go off to America!'

Lazare interrupted her in furious tones:

'You are lying! If you had chided me for my absence in that gentle fashion, I should have kissed you, and there would have been an end of the matter. But it was you who accused me of making you spend your life in tears. Yes, you threatened to go and throw yourself into the sea, if I continued to make your life unbearable.'

Then they flew at each other again, and gave vent to all the bitterness which the continual jarring of their temperaments aroused in them. The slightest little differences set them bickering, and brought them to a state of exasperated antipathy which made the rest of the day wretched. Whenever her husband interfered with her enjoyment Louise, despite her gentle face, proved as malicious as a fawning cat, that loves to be caressed, but strikes out with its claws at the slightest irritation; and Lazare, finding in these quarrels a relief from his besetting ennui, frequently persisted in them for the sake of the excitement they brought.

However, Pauline continued listening to the quarrel. She was suffering greater unhappiness than they themselves were. That fashion of loving one another was beyond her comprehension. Why couldn't they make mutual allowances and accommodate themselves to each other, since they had to live together? She was deeply pained, for she still regarded the marriage as her own work, and she longed to see it a happy and harmonious one, so that she might feel compensated for the sacrifice she had made by knowing that she had, at any rate, acted rightly.

'I never reproach you for squandering my fortune,' Louise continued.

'There was only that accusation wanting!' Lazare cried. 'It wasn't my fault that I was robbed of it.'

'Oh! it's only stupid folks who allow their pockets to be emptied, who are robbed. But, any way, we are now reduced to a wretched income of four or five thousand francs, barely sufficient to enable us to live in this hole of a place. If it were not for Pauline, our child would have to go naked one of these days, for I quite expect that you will squander all that we have left, what with all your extraordinary fads and speculations that come to grief one after the other.'

'There! there! Prate away! Your father has already paid me similar pretty compliments. I guessed you had been writing to him. I've given up that speculation in manure in consequence; though I know it was a perfectly safe thing, with cent. per cent. to be gained. But now I'm like you, and I've had enough of it, and the deuce take me if I bestir myself any more. We will go on living here.'

'A pretty life, isn't it, for a woman of my age? It's nothing but a gaol, with never an opportunity of going out or seeing anybody; and there's that stupid sea for ever in front of one, which only seems to increase one's ennui——Oh! if I had only known! If I had only known!'

'And do you suppose that I enjoy myself here? If I were not married, I should be able to go away to some distant place and try my fortune. I have longed to do so a score of times. But that's all at an end now; I'm nailed down to this lonely wilderness, where there's nothing to do but to go to sleep. You have done for me; I feel that very clearly.'

'I have done for you! I!—I didn't force you to marry me, did I? It was you who ought to have seen that we were not suited to each other. It is your fault if our lives are wrecked.'

'Ah! yes, indeed, our lives are certainly wrecked, and you do all you can to make them more intolerable every day.'

Pauline, though she had resolved not to interfere between them, could no longer restrain herself.

'Oh! do give over, you unhappy creatures! You seem to take a pleasure in marring a life which might be such a happy one. Why will you goad each other into saying things which you cannot recall and which make you so wretched? Hold your tongues, both of you! I won't let this go on any longer.'

Louise had fallen into a chair in a fit of tears, while Lazare, in a state of wild excitement, strode up and down the room.

'Crying won't do any good, my dear,' Pauline continued. 'You are really not tolerant; you have too many grievances. And you, my poor fellow, how can you treat her in this unkind fashion? It is abominable of you. I thought that, at any rate, you had a kind heart. You are, both of you, a couple of overgrown children, and are equally in fault, making yourselves wretched without knowing why. But I won't have it any longer, do you hear? I won't have unhappy people about me. Go and kiss each other at once!'

She tried to laugh; she no longer felt that tremor which had at first so disquieted her. She was only thrilled by a glow of kindliness, a desire to see them in each other's arms, so that she might be sure their quarrel was at an end.

'Kiss him, indeed! I should just think so!' exclaimed Louise. 'He has insulted me too much!'

'Never!' exclaimed Lazare.

Then Pauline broke into a merry laugh.

'Come, come!' she said; 'don't sulk with each other. You know, I am very determined about having my own way. The dinner is getting burnt, and our guests are waiting. If you don't do as I tell you, Lazare, I shall come and make you. Go down on your knees before her, and clasp her affectionately to your heart. No, no! you must do it better than that!'

She made them twine their arms closely and lovingly about each other, and watched them kiss, with an air of joyful triumph, without the least sign of trouble in her clear, calm eyes. Within her glowed warm, thrilling joy, like some subtle fire, which raised her high above them. Lazare pressed his wife to his heart in remorse; and Louise, who was still in her dressing-wrap, with her neck and arms bare, returned his caresses, her tears streaming forth more freely than before.

'There! that's much nicer, isn't it, than quarrelling?' said Pauline. 'I will be off, now that you no longer need me to make peace between you.'

She sprang to the door as she spoke, and quickly closed it upon that chamber of love, with its perfume of heliotrope, which now thrilled her with soft emotion, as though it were an accomplice perfume which would complete her task of reconciliation.

When she got downstairs to the kitchen, Pauline began to sing as she stirred her stew. Then she threw a bundle of wood on the fire, arranged the turnspit, and began to watch the duck roast with a critical eye. It amused her to have to play the servant's part. She had tied a big white apron round her, and felt quite pleased at the thought of waiting upon them all and undertaking the most humble duties, so that she might be able to tell them that they were that day indebted to her for their gaiety and health. Now that, thanks to her, they were smiling and happy, she wanted to serve them a festive repast of very good things, of which they would partake plentifully while growing bright and mirthful round the table.

She thought, however, of her uncle and the child again, and hastily ran out on to the terrace, where she was greatly astonished to find her cousin seated by the side of his little son.

'What!' she exclaimed, 'have you come down already?'

He merely nodded his head in answer. He seemed to have fallen back into his former weary indifference; his shoulders were bent, and his hands were lying listlessly in front of him. Then Pauline said to him with an expression of uneasy anxiety:

'I hope you didn't begin again as soon as my back was turned?'

'No, no!' he at last made up his mind to reply. 'She will be down as soon as she has put on her dress. We have quite forgiven each other and made it up. But how long will it last? To-morrow there will be something else; every day, every hour! You can't change people, and you can't prevent things happening.'

Pauline became very grave, and her saddened eyes sought the ground. Lazare was right. She could clearly foresee a long series of days like this in store for them, the same incessant quarrels, which she would have to smooth away. And she was no longer quite sure that she was altogether cured herself, and might not again give way to her old outbursts of jealousy. Ah! were these daily troubles never to have an end? But she had already raised her eyes again; she remembered how many times she had won the victory over herself; and as for those other two, she would see whether they would not grow tired of quarrelling before she did of reconciling them. This thought brightened her, and she laughingly repeated it to Lazare. What would be left for her to do, if the house became perfectly happy? She would fall a victim to ennui herself, if she hadn't some little worries to smooth away.

'Where are the priest and the Doctor?' she asked, surprised to see them no longer there.

'They must have gone into the kitchen garden,' said Chanteau. 'The Abbé wanted to show our pears to the Doctor.'

Pauline was going to look from the corner of the terrace, when she stopped short before little Paul.

'Ah! He has woke up again!' she cried. 'Just look at him! He's already trying to be off on the loose!'

Paul had just pulled himself up on to his little knees in the midst of the rug, and was beginning to creep off slyly upon all fours. Before he reached the gravel, however, he tripped over a fold in the rug, and rolled upon his back, with his frock thrown back and his little legs and arms in the air. He lay kicking about and wriggling amidst the poppy-like brilliance of the rug.

'Well! he's kicking in a fine way!' cried Pauline merrily. 'Look, and you shall see how he has improved in his walking since yesterday.'

She knelt down beside the child and tried to set him on his feet. He had developed so slowly that he was very backward for his age, and they had for a time feared that he would always be weak on his legs. So it was a great joy to the family to see him make his first attempts at walking, clutching at the air with his hands, and tumbling down over the smallest bit of gravel.

'Come now! give over playing,' Pauline called to him. 'Come and show them that you are a man. There now, keep steady, and go and kiss papa, and then you shall go and kiss grandfather.'

Chanteau, whose face was twitching with sharp shooting pains, turned his head to watch the scene. Lazare, notwithstanding his despondency, was willing to lend himself to the fun.

'Come along!' he cried to the child.

'Oh! you must hold out your arms to him,' Pauline explained. 'He won't venture if you don't. He likes to see something that he can fall against. Come, my treasure, pluck up a little courage!'

There were three steps for him to take. There were loving exclamations and unbounded enthusiasm when Paul made up his mind to go that little distance, with all the swaying of a tight-rope walker who feels uncertain of his legs. He fell into the arms of his father, who kissed him on his still scanty hair, while he smiled with an infant's vague delighted smile, widely opening his moist and rosy little mouth. Then his godmother wanted to make him talk, but his tongue was still more backward than his legs, and he only uttered guttural sounds in which his relatives alone could distinguish the words 'papa' and 'mamma.'

'Oh! but there's something else yet,' Pauline resumed. 'He promised to go and kiss his grandfather. Go along with you! Ah! it's a fine walk you've got before you this time!'

There were at least eight steps between Lazare's chair and Chanteau's. Paul had never ventured so far out into the world before, and so there was considerable excitement about the matter. Pauline took up a position half-way in order to prevent accidents, and two long minutes were spent in persuading the child to make a start. At last he set off, swaying about, with his hands clutching the air. For an instant Pauline thought that she would have to catch him in her arms, but he pushed bravely forward and fell upon Chanteau's knees. Bursts of applause greeted him.

Then they made him repeat the journey half a score of times. He no longer showed any signs of fear; he started off at the first call, went from his grandfather to his father, and then back again to his grandfather, laughing loudly all the time, and quite enjoying the fun, though he always seemed on the point of tumbling over, as if the ground were shaking beneath him.

'Just once again to father!' Pauline cried.

Lazare was beginning to get a little tired. Children, even his own, quickly bored him. As he looked at his boy, so merry and now out of danger, the thought flashed through his mind that this little creature would outlive him and would doubtless close his eyes for the last time, an idea which made him shudder with agony. Since he had come to the determination to continue vegetating at Bonneville, he was constantly occupied with the thought that he would die in the room where his mother had died; and he never went up the stairs without telling himself that one day his coffin would pass that way. The entrance to the passage was very narrow, and there was an awkward turning, which was a perpetual source of disquietude to him, and he worried himself with wondering how the bearers would be able to carry him out without jolting him. As increasing age day by day shortened his span of life, that constant dwelling upon the thought of death hastened his breaking-up, annihilated his last shreds of manliness. He was 'quite done for,' as he often told himself; he was of no further use at all, and he would ask himself what was the good of bestirring himself, as he fell deeper and deeper into the slough of boredom.

'Just once more to grandfather!' cried Pauline.

Chanteau was not able to stretch out his arms to receive and support his grandson, and, though he set his knees apart, the clutching of the child's puny fingers at his trousers drew sighs of pain from him. The little one was already used to the old man's ceaseless moaning, and probably imagined, in his scarcely awakened mind, that all grandfathers suffered in the same way. That day, however, in the bright sunshine, as he came and fell against him, he raised his little face, checked his laugh, and gazed at the old man with his vacillating eyes. The grandfather's deformed hands looked like hideous blocks of mingled flesh and chalk; his face, dented with red wrinkles, disfigured by suffering, seemed to have been violently twisted towards his right shoulder; while his whole body was covered with bumps and crevices, as if it were that of some old stone saint, damaged and badly pieced together. Paul appeared quite surprised to see him looking so ill and so old in the sunshine.

'Just once more! Just once more!' cried Pauline again.

She, full of health and cheerfulness, kept sending the little lad to and fro between the two men, from the grandfather, who obstinately lived on in hopeless suffering, to the father, who was already undermined by terror of the hereafter.

'Perhaps his generation will be a less foolish one than this,' she suddenly exclaimed. 'He won't accuse chemistry of spoiling his life; he will believe that it is still possible to live, even with the certainty of having some day to die.'

Lazare smiled in an embarrassed way.

'Bah!' he muttered, 'he will have the gout like my father, and his nerves will be worse strung than mine. Just see how weak he is! It is the law of degeneration.'

'Be quiet!' cried Pauline. 'I will bring him up, and you'll see if I don't make a man of him!'

There was a moment's silence, while she clasped the child to her in a motherly embrace.

'Why don't you get married, as you're so fond of children?' Lazare asked.

She looked at him in amazement.

'But I have a child! Haven't you given me one? I get married! Never! What an idea!'

She dandled little Paul in her arms, and laughed yet more loudly as she declared that Lazare had quite converted her to the doctrines of the great Saint Schopenhauer, and that she would remain unmarried in order to be able to work for the universal deliverance. And she was, indeed, the incarnation of renunciation, of love for others and kindly charity for erring humanity.

The sun was sinking to rest in the boundless waters, perfect serenity fell from the paling sky, the immensity of air and sea alike lay wrapped in all the mellow softness of the close of a lovely day. Far away over the water one single little white sail gleamed like a spark, but it vanished as the sun sank beneath the long line of the horizon; then there was nothing to be seen save the gradual deepening of the twilight over the motionless sea. And Pauline was still dandling the child, and laughing with brave gaiety as she stood between her despairing cousin and her moaning uncle, in the middle of the terrace, which was now growing bluish in the shadowy dusk. She had stripped herself of everything, but happiness rang out in her clear laugh.

'Aren't we going to dine this evening?' asked Louise, making her appearance in a coquettish dress of grey silk.

'I'm quite ready,' Pauline replied. 'I can't think what they can be doing in the garden.'

At that moment Abbé Horteur came back, looking very much distressed. In reply to their anxious questions, after seeking for some phrase which would soften the shock, he ended by bluntly saying:

'We have just discovered poor Véronique hanging from one of your pear-trees.'

They all raised a cry of surprise and horror, and their faces paled beneath the passing quiver of death.

'But what could make her do such a thing?' cried Pauline. 'She could have had no reason, and she had even to prepare the dinner. It can scarcely be because I told her that they had made her pay ten sous too much for her duck!'

In his turn Doctor Cazenove now came up. For the last quarter of an hour he had been vainly trying to restore animation to the poor woman's body in the coach-house, whither Martin had helped him to carry it. One could never tell, he said, what such whimsical old servants would do. She had never really got over her mistress's death.

'It didn't take her long,' he added. 'She just strung herself up by the strings of one of her kitchen aprons.'

Lazare and Louise, frozen with terror, said not a word. Chanteau, after listening in silence, felt a pang of disgust as he thought of the compromised dinner. And that wretched creature without hands or feet, who had to be put to bed and fed like a child, that pitiable remnant of a man, whose almost vanished life was nothing more than one scream of pain, cried out in furious indignation:

'What a fool one must be to go and kill oneself!'

THE END

FOOTNOTES