'Are you deaf?'

'If I don't answer, it's because I don't choose,' Véronique cried snappishly, bursting with angry excitement, and rubbing a candlestick violently enough to hurt her fingers. 'She is quite right in going away. If I had been in her place, I would have taken myself off long ago.'

Madame Chanteau listened with gaping lips, quite stupefied by this mutinous outburst of loquacity.

'I'm not talkative,' Véronique continued, 'but you mustn't press me too far or I shall let out all I think. I should have liked to fling Mademoiselle Pauline into the sea on the day you first brought her here as a little girl, but I can't bear to see anyone ill-treated, and you have all of you treated her so abominably that one of these days I shall give anyone who hurts her a swinging box on the ears. You can give me warning, if you like; I don't care a button; but I will let her into some nice secrets. Yes, she shall know all about how you have treated her, with all your fine pretences to honour and honesty.'

'Hold your tongue! You are quite mad!' cried Madame Chanteau, much disquieted by this fresh explosion.

'No, I will not hold my tongue! It is all too shameful! Shameful, I say! Do you hear me? I have been choking with it all for years and years! Wasn't it bad enough of you to rob her of her money? Couldn't you have been content with that, without tearing her poor little heart to shreds? Oh yes! I know all about it; I have seen through all your underhand plottings. Monsieur Lazare is perhaps not quite so calculating as you are; but in other respects he's not much better than you, for he wouldn't much mind giving her her death-blow out of mere selfishness, just to save himself from feeling bored! Ah, me! there are some people who come into this world only to be preyed upon and devoured by others.'

She flourished the candlestick about, and then caught hold of a pan, which rumbled like a drum under the violent rubbing she gave it. Madame Chanteau had been sorely tempted to turn her out of the house at once, but she succeeded in restraining herself and said to her icily:

'So you won't go up and speak to the girl? It would be for her own good, to prevent her from committing a piece of folly.'

Véronique became silent again, but at last she growled out:

'I'll go up to her. Reason is reason, after all, and an inconsiderate act never does any good.'

She stayed for a minute or two to wash her hands, and then took off her dirty apron. When she opened the door in the passage to make her way to the stairs a loud wail rushed in. It was the ceaseless heart-rending wail of Chanteau. Madame Chanteau, who was following Véronique, thereupon seemed struck with an idea, and exclaimed in an undertone, emphasising her words:

'Tell her that she can't think of leaving her uncle in the dreadful state in which he is. Do you hear?'

'Well, he certainly is bellowing hard; there's no doubt of that,' Véronique replied.

She went up the stairs, while her mistress, who had stretched out her hand towards her husband's room, purposely refrained from closing the door. The sick man's groans ascended the staircase, increasing in volume at every fresh storey. When Véronique reached Pauline's room she found her just on the point of leaving, having fastened up in a bundle what little linen she would absolutely require, and intending to send old Malivoire to fetch the rest in the morning. She had calmed down again, and, though very pale and low-spirited, was simply obeying the dictates of her reason without any feeling of anger.

'Either she or I,' was the only answer she returned to all that Véronique said, and she sedulously avoided mentioning Louise's name.

When Véronique conveyed this reply to Madame Chanteau, she found the latter in Louise's room, where the girl, having dressed herself—for on her side she was determined to go away—stood trembling, alarmed at the slightest creaking of the door. Madame Chanteau was obliged to yield, and sent to Verchemont for the baker's trap, saying that she would take Louise to her Aunt Léonie at Arromanches. They would invent some story to tell this lady; they would make the violence of Chanteau's attack a pretext, alleging that his screams had become quite unendurable.

After the departure of the two ladies, whom Lazare safely seated in the baker's trap, Véronique shouted in the passage at the top of her voice:

'You can come downstairs now, Mademoiselle Pauline; there is nobody here.'

The house seemed empty; the heavy gloomy silence was broken only by Chanteau's perpetual groans, which became louder and louder. As Pauline came down the last step Lazare, returning to the house from the yard, met her face to face. His whole body shook with a nervous trembling; he paused for a moment, as though anxious to confess his fault and implore forgiveness, but a rush of tears choked his voice, and he hurried up to his own room, without having been able to say a word.

Chanteau was still lying with his head across the bolster and his arm rigidly outstretched. He no longer dared make the slightest movement; doubtless he had not even been aware of Pauline's absence, as he lay there with his eyes closed and his mouth open to yell and groan. None of the sounds of the house reached him; and all he thought of was to complain as long and as loudly as his breath would let him. His cries grew more and more desperate, till they at last seriously disturbed Minouche, who had had a family of four kittens thrown away that morning, and who, already quite forgetful of them, had been purring lazily on an arm-chair.

When Pauline took her place again, her uncle howled so loudly that the cat got up, unable to endure the din. She fixed her eyes steadily on the sick man, with the indignation of a well-behaved person whose serenity is disturbed. If she could not be allowed to purr in peace, it would be impossible for her to stop there. And she took herself off, with her tail in the air.

VI

When Madame Chanteau returned home again in the evening, a few minutes before dinner, no further mention was made of Louise. She merely called to Véronique to come and take her boots off. Her left foot was paining her.

'Little wonder of that!' the servant murmured. 'It's quite swollen.'

The seams of the leather had indeed left crimson marks on the soft white skin. Lazare, who had just come downstairs, looked at his mother's foot and said:

'You have been walking too much.'

But she had really only walked through Arromanches. Besides the pain in her foot, she that day experienced a difficulty in breathing, such as had been increasingly affecting her at intervals for some months past. Presently she began to blame her boots for the pain she was enduring.

'Those tiresome bootmakers don't ever seem to make the instep high enough! As soon as ever I get my boots on I'm in a state of torture.'

However, as she felt no further pain after she had put on her slippers, nothing more was thought of the matter. Next morning the swelling had extended to her ankle, but by the following night it disappeared altogether.

A week passed. From the very first dinner at which Pauline had again found herself in the presence of Madame Chanteau and Lazare they had all forced themselves to resume their ordinary demeanour towards each other. No allusion was made to what had occurred; everything seemed to be just the same as usual. The family life went on in the old mechanical way, with the same customary expressions of affection, the same good-mornings and good-nights, and the same lifeless kisses given at fixed hours. A feeling of great relief came, however, that they were at last able to wheel Chanteau to his place at table. This time his knees had remained stiff with ankylosis, and he could not stand upright. But none the less he enjoyed his freedom from actual pain, and was so entirely wrapped up in egotistical satisfaction at his own well-being that he never gave a thought to the joys or cares of the other members of the family. When Madame Chanteau ventured to mention Louise's sudden departure, he begged her not to speak to him of such melancholy matters. Pauline, now freed from her attendance in her uncle's room, tried to find some other means of occupying herself, but she could not conceal the grief oppressing her. She found the evenings especially painful, and her distress was plainly visible despite all her affectation of calmness. Ostensibly everything was just the same as usual, and the old every-day routine was gone through; but every now and then a nervous gesture or even a momentary pause would make them all conscious of the hidden breach, the rift of which they never spoke, but which was, all the same, always widening.

At first Lazare had felt contempt for himself. The moral superiority of Pauline, who was so upright and just, had filled him with shame and vexation. Why had he lacked the courage to go to her, confess his fault, and ask her pardon? He might have told her the whole truth, how he had suddenly been excited and carried away by the presence of Louise, whose glamour had intoxicated him; and his cousin was too generous and large-hearted not to understand and make allowances. But insurmountable embarrassment had kept him back; he felt afraid of cutting a still more contemptible figure in the girl's eyes by entering upon an explanation in which he would very likely stammer and hesitate like a child. Beneath his hesitation, too, there lurked the fear of telling another falsehood, for his thoughts were still full of Louise, her image was perpetually haunting him. In spite of himself, his long walks always seemed to lead him into the neighbourhood of Arromanches. One evening he went right on to Aunt Léonie's little house and prowled round it, hurriedly taking flight as he heard a shutter move, all confusion at the baseness he had contemplated. It was the sense of his own unworthiness that doubled his feeling of shame in Pauline's presence; and he freely condemned himself, though he could not quench his passion. The struggle was perpetually going on within his mind, and never before had his natural irresolution proved such a source of pain to him. He only had sufficient honesty and strength of purpose left him to avoid Pauline and thus escape the last dishonour of perjuring himself. It was possible that he still loved his cousin, but the alluring image of her friend was ever before him, blotting out the past and barring the future.

Pauline, on her side, waited for his defence and apology. In her first outburst of indignation she had sworn that she would never forgive him. Then she had begun to suffer secretly at finding that her forgiveness had not been asked. Why did he keep silence, and seem so feverish and restless, spending all his time out of doors, as though he were afraid to find himself alone with her? She was quite ready to listen to him and to forget everything, if only he would show a little repentance. As the hoped-for explanation failed to come, she racked her mind to find reasons for her cousin's silence. Her own pride kept her from making the first advance; and, as the days painfully and slowly passed, she succeeded in conquering herself so far as to resume all her old cheerful activity. But beneath that brave show of calmness there lurked everlasting unhappiness, and in her own room at night she burst into fits of tears, and had to stifle the sound of her sobs by burying her head in her pillow. Nobody spoke about the wedding, though it was evident that they all thought of it. The autumn was coming on; what was to be done? Nobody seemed to care to say anything on the matter; they all avoided coming to a decision till they should feel able to discuss it again.

It was about this time that Madame Chanteau completely lost her head. She had always been excitable and restless, but the dim causes which had undermined all her good principles had now reached a period of great destructiveness. Never before had she found herself so completely off her balance, so nervously feverish as now. The necessity for restraint exasperated her torment. She suffered from her rageful longing for money, which grew stronger day by day and ended by carrying off her reason and her heart. She was continually attacking Pauline, whom she now began to blame for Louise's departure, accusing her of it as of an act of robbery that had despoiled her son. She felt an ever-open wound which would not close; the smallest trifles assumed monstrous proportions; she remembered the slightest incidents of the horrid scene; she could still hear Pauline crying, 'Be off! Be off!' And she began to imagine that she herself was being driven away, that all the joy and the fortune of the family was being flung into the streets. At night-time, as she rolled about in bed in a restless semi-somnolent state, she even regretted that death had not freed them from that accursed Pauline. Intricate schemes and calculations sprang up in wild confusion in her brain, but she was never able to hit upon any practicable means of getting rid of the girl.

At the same time a kind of reaction seemed to increase her affection for her own son, and she worshipped him now almost more than she had done when she had held him in her arms as an infant and had possessed his undivided love. From morning till night she followed him with her anxious eyes; and when they were alone together she would throw her arms around him and kiss him, and beg him not to distress himself. She swore to him that everything should be put right, that she would strangle those who opposed her rather than have him unhappy. After a fortnight of this continual struggling, her face had become as pale as wax, though she grew no thinner. The swelling in her feet had twice appeared again, and had then subsided.

One morning she rang for Véronique, to whom she showed her legs, which had swollen to the thighs during the night.

'Just look at the state I'm in! Isn't it provoking? I wanted to go out so much to-day, and now I shall be obliged to stay in bed! Don't say anything about it for fear of alarming Lazare.'

She did not seem to be at all alarmed herself. She merely remarked that she felt a little tired, and the members of the family simply supposed that she was suffering from a slight attack of lumbago. As Lazare had gone off on one of his rambles along the shore, and Pauline refrained from entering her aunt's room, knowing that her presence there would be unwelcome, the sick woman occupied herself by dinning furious charges against her niece into the servant's ears. She seemed to have lost all control of herself. The immobility to which she was condemned and the palpitations of the heart which stifled her at the slightest movement goaded her into ever-increasing exasperation.

'What's she doing downstairs? Up to some fresh wickedness, I'm sure! She'll never think of bringing me even a glass of water, you'll see!'

'But, Madame,' urged Véronique, 'it is you who drive her from you.'

'Ah! you don't know her! There never was such a hypocrite as she is. Before other people she pretends to be kind and generous, but there's nothing she wouldn't do or say when your back's turned. Yes, my good girl, you were the only one who saw things clearly on the day I first brought her here. If she had never come, we shouldn't now be in the state we are. She will prove the ruin of us all. Your master has suffered all the agonies of the damned since she has been in this house, and she has worried and distressed me till she has quite undermined my health; while as for my son, she made him lose his head entirely.'

'Oh, Madame! how can you say that when she is so kind and good to you all?'

Right up to the evening Madame Chanteau thus unburdened herself of her anger. She raved about everything, particularly about the abominable way in which Louise had been turned out of the house, though it was the money question that aroused her greatest anger. When Véronique, after dinner, was able to go down to the kitchen again she found Pauline there, occupying herself by putting the crockery away; and so the servant, in her turn, took the opportunity of unburdening herself of the angry indignation which was choking her.

'Ah! Mademoiselle, it is very good of you to bother about their plates. If I were you, I should smash the whole lot to bits!'

'What for?' the girl asked in astonishment.

'Because, whatever you were to do, you couldn't come up to half of what they accuse you of!'

Then she broke out angrily, raking up everything from the day of Pauline's arrival there.

'It would put God Almighty Himself into a rage to see such things! She has drained your money away sou by sou, and she has done it in the most shameless manner imaginable. Upon my word, to hear her talk one would suppose that it was she who had been keeping you. When she had your money in her secrétaire she made ever so much fuss about keeping it safe and untouched, but all that didn't prevent her greedy hands from digging pretty big holes in it. It's a nice piece of play-acting that she's been keeping up all this time, contriving to make you pay for those salt workshops and then keeping the pot boiling with what was left! Ah! I daresay you don't know, but if it hadn't been for you they would all have starved! She got into a pretty flurry when the people in Paris began to worry her about the accounts! Yes, indeed, you could have had her sent right off to the assize court if you had liked. But that didn't teach her any lesson; she's still robbing you, and she'll end by stripping you of your very last copper. I daresay you think I'm not speaking the truth, but I swear that I am! I have seen it all with my eyes and heard it with my ears; and I have too much respect for you, Mademoiselle, to tell you the worst things, such as how she went on when you were ill and she couldn't go rummaging in your chest of drawers.'

Pauline listened without finding a single word with which to interrupt the narrative. The thought that the family were actually living upon her and rapaciously plundering her had, indeed, frequently cast a gloom over her happiest days. But she had always refused to allow her mind to dwell on the subject; she had preferred to go on living in ignorance and accusing herself secretly of avarice. To-day, however, she had to hear the whole truth of the matter, and Véronique's outspokenness seemed to make facts worse than she had believed. At each fresh sentence the young girl's memory awoke within her; she recalled old incidents, the exact meaning of which she had not at the time understood, and she now saw clearly through all Madame Chanteau's machinations to get hold of her money. Whilst listening she had slowly dropped upon a chair, as though suddenly overcome with great fatigue, and an expression of grief and pain appeared upon her lips.

'You are exaggerating!' she murmured.

'Exaggerating! I!' Véronique continued violently. 'It isn't so much the money part of the business that makes me so angry. But what I can't forgive her is for having taken Monsieur Lazare from you after once having given him to you. Oh yes! it was very nice of her to rob you of your money and then to turn against you because you were no longer rich enough, and Monsieur Lazare must needs marry an heiress! Yes, indeed; what do you think of it? They first pillage you, and then toss you aside because you are no longer rich enough for them! No, Mademoiselle, I will not give over! There is no need to tear people's hearts to shreds after emptying their pockets. As you loved your cousin, and it was his duty to pay you back with affection and kindness, why, it was abominable of your aunt to steal him from you! She did everything. I saw through it all! Yes, every evening she excited the girl; she made her fall in love with the young man by all her talk about him. As certainly as that lamp is shining, it was she who threw them into each other's arms. Bah! she would have been only too glad to have seen them compelled to marry; and it isn't her fault if that didn't take place. Try and defend her if you can, she who trampled you under foot and caused you so much grief, for you sob in the night like a Magdalene! I can hear you from my room! I feel beside myself with all that cruelty and injustice!'

'Don't say any more, I beseech you!' stammered Pauline, whose courage failed her. 'You are giving me too great pain.'

Big tears rolled down her cheeks. She felt quite conscious that Véronique was only telling her the truth, and her heart bled within her. All the past sprang up before her eyes in lively reality, and she again saw Lazare pressing Louise to his breast, while Madame Chanteau kept guard on the landing. Ah, God! what had she done that everyone should join in deceiving her, when she herself had kept faith with all?

'I beg you, say no more! I am choking with it all!'

Then Véronique, seeing that she was painfully overcome, contented herself with adding:

'Well, it's for your sake and not for hers that I don't go on. She's been spitting out a string of abominations about you ever since the morning. She quite exhausts my patience and makes my blood boil when I hear her turning all the kindnesses you've done her into evil. Yes, indeed! She pretends that you have been the ruin of the family, and that now you are killing her son! Go and listen at the door, if you don't believe me!'

Then, as Pauline burst into a fit of sobbing, Véronique, quite unnerved, flung her arms round her neck and kissed her hair, saying:

'There, there, Mademoiselle, I'll say no more. But it's only right that you should know. It's too shameful for you to be treated in such a way. But there, I won't say another word, so don't take on so!'

They were silent for a time, while the servant raked out the embers still burning in the grate, but she could not refrain from growling:

'I know very well why she's swelling out! All her wickedness has gathered in her knees!'

Pauline, who was looking intently at the tiled floor, her mind upset and heavy with grief, raised her eyes and asked Véronique what she meant. Had the swelling, then, come back again? The servant showed some embarrassment, as she had to break the promise of silence which she had given to Madame Chanteau. Though she allowed herself full liberty to judge her mistress, she still obeyed her orders. Now, however, she was obliged to admit that her legs had again swollen badly during the night, though Monsieur Lazare was not to know it. While the servant gave details of Madame Chanteau's condition the expression of Pauline's face changed—depression gave place to anxiety. In spite of all that she had just learned of the old lady's conduct, she was painfully alarmed by the appearance of symptoms which she knew betokened grave danger.

'But she mustn't be left alone like this!' she exclaimed, springing up. 'She is in danger!'

'In danger, indeed?' cried Véronique, unfeelingly. 'She doesn't at all look like it, and she certainly doesn't think so herself, for she's far too busy befouling other folks and giving herself airs in her bed like a Pasha. Besides, she's asleep just now, and we must wait till to-morrow, which is just the day when the Doctor always comes to Bonneville.'

The next day it was no longer possible to conceal from Lazare his mother's condition. All night long had Pauline listened, constantly awakened from brief dozes, and ever believing that she heard groans ascending through the floor. Then in the morning she fell into so deep a sleep that it was only at nine o'clock she was roused by the slamming of a door. When, after hastily dressing herself, she went downstairs to make inquiries, she encountered Lazare on the landing of the first floor. He had just left his mother's room. The swelling was reaching her stomach, and Véronique had come to the conclusion that the young man must be warned.

'Well?' asked Pauline.

At first Lazare, who looked utterly upset, made no reply. Yielding to a habit that had grown upon him, he grasped his chin with his trembling fingers, and when at last he tried to speak he could scarcely stammer:

'It is all over with her!'

He went upstairs to his own room with a dazed air. Pauline followed him. When they reached that big room on the second floor, which she had never entered since the day she had surprised Louise there in her cousin's arms, Pauline closed the door and tried to reassure the young man.

'You don't even know what is the matter with her. Wait till the Doctor comes, at any rate, before you begin to alarm yourself. She is very strong, and we may always hope for the best.'

But he was possessed by a sudden presentiment, and repeated obstinately:

'It is all over with her; all over.'

It was a perfectly unexpected blow, and quite overcame him. When he had risen that morning, he had looked at the sea, as he always did, yawning with boredom and complaining of the idiotic emptiness of life. Then, his mother having shown him her knees, the sight of her poor swollen limbs, puffed out by œdema, huge and pallid, looking already like lifeless trunks, had thrilled him with panic-stricken tenderness. It was always like this. At every moment fresh trouble came. Even now, as he sat upon the edge of his big table, trembling from head to foot, he did not dare to give the name of the disease whose symptoms he had recognised. He had ever been haunted by a dread of heart disease seizing upon himself and his relations, for his two years of medical study had not sufficed to show him that all diseases were liable to lead to death. To be stricken at the heart, at the very source of life, that to him seemed the all-terrible, pitiless cause of death. And it was this death that his mother was going to die, and which he himself would infallibly die also in his own turn!

'Why should you distress yourself in this way?' Pauline asked him. 'Plenty of dropsical people live for a very long time. Don't you remember Madame Simonnot? She died in the end of inflammation of the lungs.'

But Lazare only shook his head. He was not a child, to be deceived in that manner. His feet went on swinging to and fro, and he still continued trembling, while he kept his eyes fixed persistently on the window. Then, for the first time since their rupture, Pauline kissed him on the brow in her old manner. They were together again, side by side, in that big room, where they had grown up, and all their feeling against one another had died away before the great grief which was threatening them. The girl wiped the tears from her eyes, but Lazare could not cry, and simply went on repeating, mechanically, as it were: 'It is all over with her; all over.'

When Doctor Cazenove called, about eleven o'clock, as he generally did every week after his round through Bonneville, he appeared very much astonished at finding Madame Chanteau in bed. 'What was the matter with the dear lady?' he asked. He even grew jocular, and declared that they were quite turning the house into an ambulance. But when he had examined and sounded the patient, he became more serious, and, indeed, needed all his great experience to conceal the fact that he was much alarmed.

Madame Chanteau herself had no idea of the gravity of her condition.

'I hope you are going to get me out of this, Doctor,' she said gaily. 'There's only one thing I'm frightened about, and that is that this swelling may stifle me if it goes on mounting higher and higher.'

'Oh! keep yourself easy about that,' he replied, smiling in turn. 'It won't go any higher, and if it does we shall know how to stop it.'

Lazare, who had come into the room after the Doctor's examination, listened to him trembling, burning to take him aside and question him, so that he might know the worst.

'Now, my dear Madame,' Doctor Cazenove resumed, 'don't worry yourself. I will come and have a little chat with you again to-morrow. Good-morning; I will write my prescription downstairs.'

When they got down, Pauline prevented the Doctor and Lazare from entering the dining-room, for in Chanteau's presence nothing more serious than ordinary lumbago had ever been mentioned. The girl had already put ink and paper on the table in the kitchen. And, noticing their impatient anxiety, Doctor Cazenove confessed that the case was a grave one; but he spoke in long and involved sentences, and avoided telling them anything definite.

'You mean that it is all over with her, eh?' Lazare cried at last, in a kind of irritation. 'It's the heart, isn't it?'

Pauline gave the Doctor a glance full of entreaty, which he understood.

'The heart? Well, I'm not quite so sure about that,' he replied. 'But, at any rate, even if we can't quite cure her, she may go on for a long time yet, with care.'

The young man shrugged his shoulders in the angry fashion of a child who is not to be taken in by fine stories. Then he exclaimed:

'And you never gave me any warning, Doctor, though you attended her quite recently! These dreadful diseases never come on all at once. Had you no idea of it?'

'Well, yes,' Cazenove murmured, 'I had indeed noticed some faint indications.'

Then, as Lazare broke out into a sneering laugh, he added:

'Listen to me, my fine fellow. I don't think that I'm a greater fool than others, and yet this is not the first time when it has happened to me to have had no inkling of what was coming, and to find myself taken by surprise. It is absurd of you to expect us to be able to know everything; it is already a great deal to be able to spell out the first few lines of what is going on in that intricate piece of mechanism—the human body.'

He seemed vexed, and dashed his pen about angrily as he wrote his prescription, tearing the thin paper provided for him. The naval surgeon cropped up once more in the brusque movements of his big frame. However, when he stood up again, with his old face tanned brown with the sea air, he softened as he saw both Pauline and Lazare hanging their heads hopelessly in front of him.

'My poor children,' he said, 'we will try our best to bring her round. You know that I never put on grand airs before you. So I tell you frankly that I can say nothing. But it seems to me that there is, at any rate, no immediate danger.'

Then he left the house, having ascertained that Lazare had a supply of tincture of digitalis. The prescription simply ordered some applications of this tincture to the patient's legs, and a few drops of it to be taken in a glass of sugar and water. This treatment, said the Doctor, would suffice for the moment; he would bring some pills with him in the morning. It was possible, too, that he might make up his mind to bleed her. Pauline went out with him to his gig in order to ask him to tell her the real truth, but the real truth was that he did not dare to say one thing or the other. When she returned into the kitchen the girl found Lazare re-perusing the prescription. The mere word digitalis had made him turn pale once more.

'Don't distress yourself so much,' said Véronique, who had begun to pare some potatoes, as an excuse for remaining where they were and hearing what was said. 'The doctors are all croakers. And surely there can't be much the matter when they can't tell you what it is.'

They began to discuss the question round the bowl into which the cook was cutting the potatoes, and Pauline appeared to grow a little easier in her mind. She had gone that morning to kiss her aunt, and had found her looking well. A person with cheeks like hers could not surely be dying. But Lazare went on twisting the prescription with his feverish fingers. The word digitalis blazed before his eyes. His mother was doomed.

'I am going up again,' he said at last.

As he reached the door he seemed to hesitate, and turned to his cousin and asked:

'Won't you come, just for a minute?'

Pauline then seemed to hesitate in her turn, and finally murmured:

'I'm afraid she mightn't be pleased if I did.'

And so, after a moment of silent embarrassment, Lazare went upstairs by himself, without saying another word.

When Lazare, for fear lest his father should be disquieted by his absence, appeared again at luncheon, he was very pale. From time to time during the day a ring of the bell summoned Véronique, who ran up with platefuls of soup, which the patient could scarcely be induced to taste; and when she came downstairs again she told Pauline that the poor young man was growing perfectly distracted. It was heart-breaking, she said, to see him shivering with fever by his mother's bedside, wringing his hands and with his face racked by grief, as though he every moment feared that he should see her torn from him. About three o'clock, as the servant came downstairs once more, she leant over the balustrade and called to Pauline; and as the girl reached the first-floor landing she said to her:

'You ought to go in, Mademoiselle, and help him a little. So much the worse if it displeases her. She wants Monsieur Lazare to turn her round, and he can only groan, without daring to touch her. And she won't let me go near her!'

Pauline entered the room. Madame Chanteau lay back, propped up by three pillows, and, as far as mere appearances went, if it had not been for the quick, distressful breathing which set her shoulders heaving, she might have been keeping her bed from sheer idleness. Lazare stood before her, stammering:

'It's on your right side, then, that you want me to turn you?'

'Yes; just turn me a little. Ah! my poor boy, how difficult it seems to make you understand!'

But Pauline had already taken hold gently of her aunt and turned her, saying:

'Let me do it! I am used to doing it for my uncle. There! Are you comfortable now?'

But Madame Chanteau irritably exclaimed that they were shaking her to pieces. She seemed unable to make the slightest movement without being almost suffocated, and for a moment, indeed, she lay panting, with her face quite livid. Lazare had stepped behind the bed-curtains to conceal his expression of despair; still, he remained present while Pauline rubbed her aunt's legs with the tincture of digitalis. At first he turned his head aside, but some fascination ever made his eyes return to those swollen limbs, those inert masses of pale flesh, the sight of which made him almost choke with agony. When his cousin saw how utterly upset he was she thought it safer to send him out of the room. She went up to him, and, as Madame Chanteau dozed off, tired out by the mere changing of her position, she whispered to him softly:

'You would do better to go away.'

For a moment or two he resisted; his tears blinded him, Then he yielded and went down, ashamed, and sobbing:

'Oh, God! God! I cannot endure it! I cannot endure it!'

When the sick woman again awoke, she did not at first notice her son's absence. She seemed to be in a state of stupor, and as if egotistically seeking to make sure that she was really alive. Pauline's presence alone appeared to disquiet her, although the girl sat far away and neither spoke nor moved. As her aunt bent forward, however, she felt that she must just say a word to let her know why Lazare was absent.

'It is I. Don't worry. Lazare has gone to Verchemont, where he has to see the carpenter.'

'All right,' Madame Chanteau murmured.

'You are not so ill that he should neglect his business, are you?'

'Oh! certainly not.'

From that moment she spoke but seldom of her son, notwithstanding the adoration she had manifested for him only the previous night. He became obliterated from the rest of her life, after being so long the sole reason and object of her existence. The softening of her brain, which was now beginning, merely left her a physical anxiety about her own health. She accepted her niece's care and attendance, without apparently being conscious of the change, merely following her constantly with her eyes, as though she were troubled by increasing suspicions as she saw the girl pass to and fro before the bed.

Lazare had gone down into the kitchen, where he remained nerveless, beside himself. The whole house frightened him. He could not stay in his own room, the emptiness of which oppressed him, and he dared not cross the dining-room, where the sight of his father, quietly reading a newspaper, threw him into sobs. So it was to the kitchen that he constantly betook himself, as being the one warm, cheerful spot in the house—one where he was comforted by the sight of Véronique, bustling about amongst her pans, as in the old tranquil times. As she saw him seat himself near the fireplace on a rush-bottomed chair, which he made his own, she frankly told him what she thought of his lack of courage.

'It's not much use you are, Monsieur Lazare. It's poor Mademoiselle Pauline who will have everything to do again. Anyone would suppose, to see you, that there had never been a sick woman in the house before, and yet, when your cousin nearly died of her sore throat, you nursed her so attentively. Yes, you know you did, and you stayed with her for a whole fortnight helping her to change her position whenever it was necessary.'

Lazare listened to Véronique with a feeling of surprise. This inconsistency of his had not struck him before, and he could not understand his own illogical and varying feelings and thoughts.

'Yes; that is quite true,' he said, 'quite true.'

'You would not let anybody enter the room,' the servant continued, 'and Mademoiselle was even a more distressing sight than Madame is, her suffering was so great. Whenever I came away from her room I felt completely upset, and couldn't have eaten a mouthful of anything. But now the mere sight of your mother in bed makes your heart faint. You can't even take her a cup of gruel. Whatever your mother may be, you ought to remember that she's still your mother.'

Lazare no longer heard her; he was gazing before him into space. At last he said:

'I can't help it; I really can't. It's perhaps because it is my mother, but I can't do anything. When I see her and those poor legs of hers, and think that she is dying, something seems to be snapping inside me, and I should burst out crying if I did not rush from the room.'

He began to tremble all over again. He had picked up a knife which had fallen from the table, and gazed at it with his tear-dimmed eyes without seeing it. For some time neither spoke. Véronique busied herself over her soup, which was cooking, to conceal the emotion which choked her. At last she resumed:

'You had better go down to the beach for a little while, Monsieur Lazare. You bother me by always being here in my way. And take Matthew with you. He is very tiresome, and no more knows what to do with himself than you do. I have no end of trouble to keep him from going upstairs to Madame's room.'

The next morning Doctor Cazenove was still doubtful. A sudden catastrophe was possible, he said, or the patient might recover for a longer or shorter time, if the swelling could be reduced. He gave up the idea of bleeding her, and confined himself to ordering her to take some pills which he brought, and to continue the use of the tincture of digitalis. His air of vexation showed that he felt little confidence in those remedies in a case of organic disorder, when the successive derangement of every organ renders a physician's skill of no avail. However, he was able to assure them that the sick woman suffered no pain; and, indeed, Madame Chanteau made no complaint of actual suffering. Her legs felt as heavy as lead, and she breathed with constantly increasing difficulty whenever she moved; but, whilst she lay there quietly on her back, her voice remained so firm and strong, and her eyes so bright and clear, that even she herself was deceived as to the gravity of her condition. Her son was the only one of those around her who did not venture to be hopeful at seeing her looking so calm. When the Doctor went away in his gig, he told them not to grieve too much, for that it was a great mercy both for herself and for them that she was quite unaware of her danger.

The first night had been a very hard one for Pauline. Reclining in an easy chair, she had not been able to get any sleep, for the heavy breathing of the sick woman constantly filled her ears. Whenever she was on the point of dropping off, her aunt's breath seemed to shake the house; and then, when she opened her eyes again, she felt sad and oppressed; all the troubles which had been marring her life for the last few months sprang up in her mind with fresh force. Even by the side of that death-bed she could not feel at peace, she could not constrain herself to forgive. Amidst her nightmare-like vigil during the mournful night hours Véronique's assertions caused her great torture. Old outbursts of anger and bitter jealousy surged up in her again, as she mentally recapitulated the painful details. To be loved no more! To find herself deceived, betrayed by those she had loved! And to find herself all alone, full of contempt and revolt! Her heart's wound opened and bled afresh, and never before had she experienced such bitter pain from Lazare's insulting faithlessness. Since they had, so to say, murdered her, it mattered little to her now who died! And, amidst her aunt's heavy breathing, she went on brooding ceaselessly over the robbery of her money and her affections.

The next morning she still felt contrary influences at work within her; she experienced no return of affection; it was a sense of duty alone which kept her in her aunt's room. The consciousness of this made her unhappy, and she wondered if she too were growing as wicked as the others. In this troubled state the day passed away, and, discontented with herself, repelled by her aunt's suspicions, she forced herself into attentive activity. Madame Chanteau received her ministrations snappishly, and followed her movements with suspicious eyes, carefully watching her every action. If she asked her niece for a handkerchief, she always sniffed it before using it, and when she saw the girl bring her a hot-water bottle she wanted to examine the jug.

'What's the matter with her?' Pauline whispered very softly to Véronique. 'Does she think me capable of trying to do her harm?'

When Véronique gave her a dose of her draught after the Doctor had gone away, Madame Chanteau, not noticing her niece, who was looking for some linen in the wardrobe, inquired of the servant: 'Did the Doctor prepare this?'

'No, Madame, it was Mademoiselle Pauline.'

Then the sick woman just sipped it with her lips, and made a grimace.

'Ah! it tastes of copper. I don't know what she has been making me take, but I've never had the taste of copper out of my mouth since yesterday.'

And suddenly she tossed the spoon away behind the bed. Véronique looked on in amazement.

'Whatever's the matter? What an idea to get into your head!'

'I don't want to go away before my time,' replied Madame Chanteau, as she laid her head back again upon her pillow. 'Listen! my lungs are quite sound; and it's not impossible that she may go before I do, for she isn't very healthy.'

Pauline had heard her. She turned with a heart-pang and looked at Véronique; and instead of coming any nearer she stepped further away, feeling quite ashamed of her aunt for her abominable suspicions. A sudden change came over her feelings. The idea of that unhappy woman, consumed by fear and hatred, moved her to the deepest pity; far from feeling any increase of bitterness, it was sorrowful emotion that she experienced as her eyes caught sight of all the medicine which her aunt had thrown away under the bed, from a fear of being poisoned. Until the evening she evinced persevering gentleness, and did not appear to notice the distrustful glances with which her aunt followed every motion of her hands. Her one ardent desire was to overcome the dying woman's fears by affectionate attentions, in order that she might not carry such frightful suspicions to the grave. And she forbade Véronique to distress Lazare further by telling him the truth.

Only once since morning had Madame Chanteau asked for her son, and she had appeared quite content with the first excuse made for his absence, evincing no surprise at not seeing him again. She said nothing about her husband, expressed no uneasiness whatever about his being left alone in the dining-room. All the world was gradually disappearing for her, and, minute by minute, the icy coldness of her limbs seemed to mount higher till it chilled her very heart. Whenever meal-time came round, Pauline had to go downstairs and tell some fib to her uncle. In the evening she told one to Lazare as well, assuring him that the swelling was subsiding.

In the night, however, the disease made alarming progress, and the next morning, soon after daybreak, when Pauline and the servant beheld the sick woman they were terrified by the wandering look in her eyes. Her face was not changed, and there was no feverishness, but her mind appeared to be failing her, a fixed idea seemed to be destroying her reason. She had reached the last phase; her brain, gradually wrought upon by a single absorbing passion, had now become a prey to insanity.

That morning, before Doctor Cazenove's arrival, they had a terrible time. Madame Chanteau would not even let her niece come near her.

'Do let me nurse you, I beg you!' Pauline said. 'Just let me raise you a little, as you are lying so uncomfortably.'

But her aunt began to struggle as though they were trying to suffocate her.

'No, no! You have got a pair of scissors there! Ah! you are sticking them into me! I can feel them! I can feel them! I'm bleeding all over!'

The heart-broken girl was obliged to keep at a distance from her aunt. She was quite overcome with fatigue and distress, breaking down with her useless kindly endeavours. She was obliged to put up with insults and accusations which made her burst into tears before she could induce her aunt to accept the slightest service from her. Sometimes all her efforts were in vain, and she fell weeping upon a chair, despairing of ever winning back again that affection of former days, which was now replaced by insane animosity. Still she would become all resignation once more, and strive to find some way of making her assistance acceptable by manifesting even greater care and tenderness. That morning, however, her persistent entreaties ended by provoking a paroxysm which long left her trembling.

'Aunt,' she said, as she was preparing a dose of medicine, 'it's time for you to take your draught. The Doctor, you know, particularly said that you were to take it regularly.'

Madame Chanteau insisted upon seeing the bottle, and then smelt its contents.

'Is it the same as I had yesterday?'

'Yes, aunt.'

'Then I won't have any of it!'

However, by much affectionate wheedling and entreaties, her niece prevailed on her to take just one spoonful. The sick woman's face wore an expression of deep suspicion, and no sooner was the spoonful of physic in her mouth than she spat it out again upon the floor, torn by a violent fit of coughing, and screaming out between her hiccoughs:

'It's vitriol! It is burning me!'

Amidst this supreme paroxysm her hatred and terror of Pauline, which had gradually increased ever since the day when she had first abstracted a twenty-franc piece of the other's money, now found vent in a flood of wild words, to which the poor girl listened, quite thunderstruck, unable to say a single syllable in her defence.

'Ah! you fancied I shouldn't detect it! You put verdigris and vitriol into everything! It's that which is killing me! There was nothing the matter with me, and I should have been able to get up this morning if you hadn't mixed some verdigris with my broth yesterday evening. Yes, you are tired of me, and want to get me buried and done with. But I'm very tough, and it is I who will bury you yet.'

Her speech became thicker, she choked, and her lips turned so black that an immediate catastrophe seemed probable.

'Oh! aunt, aunt!' cried Pauline, overcome with terror, 'you are making yourself so much worse by going on like this!'

'Well, that's what you want, I'm sure! Oh! I know you. You have been planning it for a long time; ever since you have been here your only thought has been how to kill us off and get hold of our money. You want to have the house for your own, and I am in your way. Ah! hussy, I ought to have choked you the first day you came here! I hate you! I hate you!'

Pauline stood there motionless, weeping in silence. Only one word rose to her lips, as though in involuntary protest against her aunt's accusations. 'Oh God! God!'

But Madame Chanteau was completely exhausted by the violence of her fury, and her mad outburst gave place to a childish terror. She fell back on her pillow, crying:

'Don't come near me! Don't touch me! If you do I shall scream out for help! No, no! I won't drink it; it's poison!'

She pulled the bed-clothes over her with her twitching hands, buried her head amongst the pillows, and kept her mouth tightly closed. When her niece, who was terribly alarmed, came to her bedside to try to calm her, she broke out into frightful screams.

'Aunt dear, be reasonable. I won't make you take any against your will.'

'Yes, you will! You've got the bottle! Oh! I'm terrified! I'm terrified!'

She was almost at the last gasp; her head had got too low, and purple blotches appeared upon her face. Pauline, imagining that her aunt was dying, rang the bell for Véronique; and it was as much as the two of them could do to raise her up and lay her properly on her pillows.

Then Pauline's own personal sufferings and heartaches disappeared amidst her intense grief. She thought no more about the last wound which her heart had received; all her passion and jealousy vanished in presence of that great wretchedness. Every other feeling became lost in one of deep pity, and she would have gladly endured injustice and insult and have sacrificed herself still more if by so doing she could only have given comfort and consolation to the others. She set herself bravely to bear the principal share of life's woes; and from that moment she never once gave way, but manifested beside her aunt's death-bed all the quiet resignation which she had shown when threatened by death herself. She was always ready; she never recoiled from anything. Even her old gentle affection came back to her; she forgave her aunt for all her mad violence during her paroxysms, and wept with pity at finding that she had gradually become insane; forcing herself to think of her as she had been in earlier years, loving her as she had done on that stormy evening when she had first come with her to Bonneville.

That day Doctor Cazenove did not call till after luncheon. An accident had detained him at Verchemont; a farmer there had broken his arm, and the Doctor had stayed to set it. After seeing Madame Chanteau he came down into the kitchen, and made no attempt to conceal his alarm. Lazare was sitting there by the fire, in that feverish idleness which preyed upon him.

'There is no more hope, is there?' he asked. 'I was reading Bouillaud's Treatise on the Diseases of the Heart again last night.'

Pauline, who had come downstairs with the Doctor, once more gave him an entreating look, which prompted him to interrupt the young man in his usual brusque fashion. Whenever an illness turned out badly, he always showed a little anger.

'Ah! the heart, my good fellow, the heart seems to be the only idea you have got! One can't be certain of anything. For my own part, I believe it's rather the liver that is affected. But, of course, when the machine gets out of order, everything in turn is more or less affected—the lungs, the stomach, and the heart itself. Instead of reading Bouillaud last night, which has only upset you, you would have done much better to go to sleep.'

This dictum of the Doctor's was like an order given to the house. In Lazare's presence it was always said that his mother was dying from a diseased liver; but he refused to believe it, and spent his sleepless hours in turning over the pages of his old books. He grew quite confused over the different symptoms, and the remark made by the Doctor that the various organs of the human body became successively deranged only served to increase his alarm.

'Well,' he said with difficulty, 'how long, then, do you think she will last?'

Cazenove made a gesture of doubt.

'A fortnight; perhaps a month. You had better not question me, for I might make a mistake, and then you would be right in saying that we know nothing and can do nothing. But the progress that the disease has made since yesterday is terrible.'

Véronique, who was washing some glasses, looked at him in alarm. Could it really be true, then, that Madame was so very ill and was going to die? Until then she had been unable to believe there was any actual danger, and had gone about her work muttering to herself of people who tried to frighten folks out of pure malice. But she now seemed stupefied, and when Pauline told her to go upstairs to Madame Chanteau, that there might be some one with her, she wiped her hands on her apron and left the kitchen, ejaculating:

'Oh, well, in that case—in that case——'

'We must not forget my uncle, Doctor,' said Pauline, who seemed to be the only one who retained self-possession. 'Don't you think we ought to warn him? Will you see him before you go?'

Just at that moment Abbé Horteur came in. He had only heard that morning of what he called 'Madame Chanteau's indisposition.' When he learned how seriously ill she really was, an expression of genuine sorrow passed over his tanned face, so cheerful a moment before as he came in from the fresh air. The poor lady! Could it be possible? She who had seemed so well and strong only three days ago!

Then after a moment's silence he asked if he could see her; at the same time glancing anxiously at Lazare, whom he knew to be little given to religion. On that account he seemed to anticipate a refusal. But the young man, who was quite broken down, did not appear to have noticed the priest's question, and it was Pauline who answered it.

'No, not to-day, your reverence. She does not know the danger she is in, and your presence might have an alarming effect upon her. We will see to-morrow.'

'Very well,' the priest at once replied; 'there is no great urgency, I hope. But we must all do our duty, you know. And as the Doctor here refuses to believe in God——'

For the last moment or two the Doctor had been gazing earnestly at the table, absorbed in thought, lost in a maze of doubt, as was always the case when he could not overcome illness. He had just caught the Abbé's last words, however, and he interrupted him, saying:

'Who told you that I didn't believe in God? God is not an impossibility; one sees very strange things! And, after all, who can be sure?'

Then he shook his head and roused himself from his reverie.

'Stay!' he went on, 'you shall come with me and shake hands with our good friend Monsieur Chanteau. He will soon stand in need of all the courage he can muster.'

'If you think it will cheer him at all,' the priest obligingly replied, 'I shall be glad to stay and play a few games of draughts with him.'

Then they both went off to the dining-room, while Pauline hastened back to her aunt. Lazare, when he was left alone, rose and hesitated for a moment as to whether he also should not go upstairs; then he went to the dining-room door to listen to his father's voice, without mustering enough courage to enter; and finally he came back to the kitchen again, and sank down upon the same chair as before, surrendering himself to his despair.

The priest and the Doctor had found Chanteau rolling a paper ball across the table—a ball formed of a prospectus discovered inside a newspaper. Minouche, who was lying near, looked on with her green eyes. She appeared to disdain such an elementary plaything, for she had her paws stowed away beneath her, never deigning to strike out at it with her claws, though it had rolled close to her nose.

'Hallo! is it you?' cried Chanteau. 'It is very good of you to come and see me. I'm very dull—all by myself. Well, Doctor, she's getting on all right, I hope? Oh! I don't feel at all uneasy about her; she's by far the strongest of all of us; she will see us all buried.'

It occurred to the Doctor that this would be a good opportunity for informing Chanteau of the real state of affairs.

'Well, certainly, there's nothing very alarming in her condition, but she seems to me to be very weak.'

'Ah! Doctor,' Chanteau exclaimed, 'you don't know her. She has an incredible fund of strength; you will see her on her feet again in a day or two!'

In his complete belief in his wife's vigorous constitution, he quite failed to understand the Doctor's hints; and the latter, not wishing to tell him the dreadful truth in plain words, could say no more. Besides, he thought that it would be as well to wait a little longer; for just then Chanteau was free from pain, his gout only troubling him in his legs, though these were sufficiently incapacitated to make it necessary to wheel him to bed in his chair.

'If it were not for these wretched legs of mine,' he said, 'I would go upstairs and see her myself.'

'Resign yourself, my friend,' said Abbé Horteur, who in his turn now tried to carry out his office of consoler. 'We each have our own cross to bear, and we are all in the hands of God——'

But he did not fail to notice that these words, so far from consoling Chanteau, only appeared to bore and even disquiet him, so he cut his exhortation short and substituted for it something more efficacious.

'Would you like to have a game at draughts? It will do you good.'

He went in person to take the draught-board from the cupboard. Chanteau was delighted, and shook hands with the Doctor, who then took his departure. The two others were soon deep in their game, quite forgetful of all else in the world, when all at once Minouche, who had probably got tired of seeing the paper ball under her nose, sprang forward, sent it spinning away, and bounded in wild antics after it all round the room.

'What a capricious creature!' cried Chanteau, put out in his play. 'She wouldn't have a game with me on any account a little while ago, and now she prevents one from thinking by playing all by herself.'

'Never mind her, said the priest mildly: 'cats have their own way of amusing themselves.'

Meantime, passing through the kitchen, Doctor Cazenove had experienced sudden emotion on seeing Lazare still sorrowfully brooding on the same chair; and he caught the young man in his big arms and kissed him paternally without saying a word. Just at that moment Véronique came downstairs, driving Matthew before her. The dog was perpetually prowling about the staircase, making a sort of hissing sound, which somewhat resembled the plaint of a bird; and, whenever he found the door of the sick woman's room open, he went in and there vented those sharp notes of his, which were ear-piercing in their persistency.

'Get away with you, do! Be off!' the servant cried. 'That noise of yours isn't likely to do her any good.'

And as she caught sight of Lazare she added: 'Take him for a walk somewhere. He will be out of our way, and it will do you good too.'

It was really an order of Pauline's that Véronique was conveying. The girl had told her to get Lazare to go out and take some long walks. But he refused to go; it even seemed to require an effort on his part to get upon his feet. However, the dog came and stood before him, and began wailing again.

'That poor Matthew isn't as young as he was once,' said the Doctor, who was watching him.

'No indeed!' said Véronique. 'He is fourteen years old now, but that doesn't prevent him from being as wild as ever after mice. Look how he has rubbed the skin off his nose, and how red his eyes are! He scented a mouse under the grate last night, and never closed his eyes afterwards; he turned my kitchen upside down, poking about everywhere. And such a great big dog, too, to worry about such tiny creatures, it's quite ridiculous! But it isn't only mice that he runs after. Anything that's little or crawls, newly hatched chickens or Minouche's kittens, anything of that sort, excites him to such a point that he even forgets to eat and drink. Just now I'm sure he scents something out of the common in the house——'

She checked herself as she caught sight of Lazare's eyes filling with tears.

'Go out for a walk, my lad,' the Doctor said to him. 'You can't be of any use here, and it will do you good to go out a little.'

The young man at last rose painfully to his feet. 'Well, we'll go,' he said. 'Come along, my poor old Matthew.'

When he had accompanied the Doctor to his gig, he set off along the cliffs with the dog. From time to time he had to stop and wait for Matthew, for the dog was really ageing quickly. His hind-quarters were becoming paralysed, and his heavy paws sounded like slippers as he dragged them along. He was now unable to go scooping out holes in the kitchen-garden, and quickly rolled over with dizziness when he set himself spinning after his tail. He had fits of coughing, too, whenever he plunged into the water, and after a quarter of an hour's walk he wanted to lie down and snore. He trudged along the beach just in front of his master's legs.

Lazare stood for a moment watching a fishing-smack coming from Port-en-Bessin, with its sail skimming over the sea like the wing of a gull. Then he went his way. The thought that his mother was dying kept on thrilling him painfully; if ever it left him for a moment, it was only to come back and rack him more violently than before. And it brought him perpetual surprise; it was an idea to which he could not grow reconciled, and which prevented him from thinking of anything else. If at times it lost distinctness he felt the vague oppression of a nightmare, in which he remained conscious of some great impending misfortune. Everything around him then seemed to disappear, and when he again beheld the sands and seaweed, the distant sea and far-reaching horizon, he started as if they were all new and strange to him. Could they be the objects that were so familiar to his eyes? Everything seemed to have changed; never before had he thus been struck by varying forms and hues. His mother was dying! And he walked on and on, trying to escape from that buzzing refrain which was ever sounding in his ears.

Suddenly he heard a deep sigh behind him. He turned and saw the dog completely exhausted, with his tongue hanging from his mouth.

'Ah! my poor old Matthew,' he said to him, 'you can't get on any farther. Well, we'll go back again. However far I may go, I shan't rid myself of my thoughts.'

That evening they hurried over dinner. Lazare, who could only swallow a few mouthfuls of bread, hastened away upstairs to his own room, excusing himself to his father by alleging some pressing work. When he reached the first floor, he went into his mother's room, where he forced himself to sit for some five minutes before kissing her and wishing her good-night. She seemed to be forgetting all about him, and never expressed the least anxiety as to what he might be doing during the day. When he bent over her, she offered him her cheek and seemed to consider his hasty good-night quite natural, absorbed as she was in the instinctive egotism which attends the approach of death. And Pauline took care to cut his visit as short as possible by inventing an excuse for sending him out of the room.

But in his own big room on the second floor his mental torment increased. It was in the night, the long weary night, that his anguish weighed heaviest upon him. He took up a supply of candles, so that he might never be without a light, and he kept them burning, one after another, till morning, terror-stricken by the thought of darkness. When he got into bed he tried in vain to read. His old medical treatises were the only books that had now any interest for him; but they filled him with fear, and he ended by throwing them away. Then he remained lying upon his back, with his eyes wide open, solely conscious of the fact that close to him, on the other side of the wall, there was an awful presence which weighed upon him and suffocated him. His dying mother's panting breath was for ever in his ears, that panting breath which had become so loud that for the last two days he had heard it whenever he climbed the staircase, which he never ascended now without hastening his steps.

The whole house seemed full of that plaint, which thrilled him as he lay in bed; the occasional intervals of quiet inspiring him with such alarm that he would run barefooted to the landing and lean over the banisters to listen. Pauline and Véronique, who kept watch together below, left the door of the room open for the sake of ventilation, and Lazare could see the pale patch of sleepy light which the night lamp threw upon the tiled floor, and could again hear his mother's heavy panting, which became louder and more prolonged in the darkness. When he went back to bed he, too, left his door open, and so intently did he listen to his mother's breathing that even in the snatches of sleep into which he fell towards morning he was still pursued by it. His personal horror of death had vanished again as at the time of his cousin's illness. His mother was going to die; everything was going to die! He abandoned himself to the contemplation of that collapse of life without any other feeling than one of exasperation at his powerlessness to prevent it.

The next morning saw the commencement of Madame Chanteau's death agony, a loquacious agony which lasted for twenty-four hours. She was calm, the dread of poison no longer terrified her, but she rambled on rapidly in a clear voice, without raising her head from her pillow. What she said was in no way conversation; she did not address herself to anyone; it was as though, in the general derangement of her faculties, her brain hastened to finish its work like a clock running down. That flood of rapid words seemed to be indeed the last tick-tack of the unwound chain of her mind. The events of her past life defiled before her; but she never said a word about the present, about her husband, or her son, or her niece, or her home at Bonneville, where, with her ambitious nature, she had suffered for ten long years. She was still Mademoiselle de la Vignière, giving music-lessons in the most distinguished families in Caen, and she familiarly spoke of people whom neither Pauline nor Véronique had ever heard of. She broke out into long rambling stories, whose details were incomprehensible even to the servant who had grown old in her service. She seemed to be emptying her brain of the recollections of her youth before she died; just as one may turn the faded letters of former days out of a desk in which they have long been lying.

In spite of her courage, Pauline could not help shuddering slightly as all those little involuntary confessions were poured out in the very throes of death. It was no longer difficult, panting breathing that filled the room, but a weird, rambling babble, of which Lazare caught fragments as he passed the door. But, however much he might turn them over in his mind, he was unable to understand them, and grew full of alarm, as though his mother were already speaking from the other side of the grave amidst invisible beings to whom she was relating those strange stories.

When Doctor Cazenove arrived he found Chanteau and Abbé Horteur playing draughts in the dining-room. From all appearances, they might still have been engaged on the game which they had commenced the day before, and have never stirred from the room since the Doctor's previous visit. Minouche sat near them, intently studying the draught-board. The priest had arrived at an early hour to resume his duties as consoler. Pauline no longer felt that his proposed visit to her aunt would be attended with inconvenience; and so, when the Doctor went upstairs to see her, the priest accompanied him to the sick woman's bedside, presenting himself simply as a friend anxious to know how she was getting on.

Madame Chanteau recognised them both, and, having been raised up on her pillows, she smilingly welcomed them with all the airs of a Caen lady holding a reception. The dear Doctor was surely quite satisfied with her, she said; she would soon be able to leave her bed. Then she questioned the Abbé about his own health. The latter, who had come upstairs with the intention of fulfilling his priestly duties, was so overcome by the dying woman's rambling chatter that he could not open his mouth; and, besides, Pauline, who was in the room, would have stopped him if he had mentioned certain subjects. The girl had sufficient control over herself to feign confident cheerfulness. When the two men went away, she accompanied them to the landing, where the Doctor, in low tones, gave her instructions as to what she should do at the last moment. Such words as 'rapid decomposition' and 'carbolic acid' were frequently mentioned, while the ceaseless chatter from the dying woman still buzzed through the open doorway.