THE JOY OF LIFE (continued 3)

'There, my dear, that's five thousand francs we've got back. There they are: they are all for you. My son has refused to keep a single one of them to repay him for all the trouble he has had.'

Chanteau had been worried in mind for some time now. Although he dared not refuse his signature when it was asked of him, the way in which his wife was dealing with their ward's fortune filled him with alarm. That total of a hundred thousand francs was for ever ringing in his ears. How could they possibly make up such a deficiency by the time when the accounts would have to be examined? And the worst of it all was that Saccard, the surrogate-guardian, with the fame of whose speculations all Paris re-echoed, had just recalled Pauline's existence, after apparently forgetting all about her for nearly eight years. He had written to ask after her, and had even spoken of calling at Bonneville one day on his way to transact some business at Cherbourg. What explanation could they possibly give him, if he were to ask for an account of how matters stood, as he undoubtedly had the right to do? This sudden awaking after such a long period of utter indifference was very alarming.

When Chanteau at last spoke to his wife on the matter, he found that she was much more affected by curiosity than by alarm. For a moment, she felt sure that the truth of the matter was that Saccard, with his gigantic speculations, had suddenly found himself ruined, and had bethought himself of getting hold of Pauline's money to try and regain what he had lost. Then, directly afterwards, she began to wonder whether it was not the girl herself who had written to her surrogate-guardian out of some feeling of revenge. But, when she found that her husband expressed the deepest disgust at any such hypothesis, she began to indulge in complicated suppositions of the most unlikely kind. Perhaps, said she, that creature of Boutigny's, the hussy whom they had refused to receive at their house, and who was running them down in all the shops of Verchemont and Arromanches, had written anonymous letters to Saccard.

'But they may do what they like, for all that,' she said. 'The girl is not eighteen yet, but we have only to marry her straight off to Lazare, and the marriage will at once make her complete mistress of her fortune.'

'Are you quite sure of that?' asked Chanteau.

'Of course I am. I was only reading it in the Code this morning.'

Madame Chanteau had taken to studying the Code lately. Her conscientious scruples were not quite extinct, and she sought about her for reasons to allay them. Legal subtleties had a special interest for her just now in the growing decline of her honesty, which the temptation afforded by the large sum of money in her keeping was gradually and completely destroying.

However, she seemed to hesitate about actually bringing the marriage scheme to an immediate issue. After the financial disaster at the sea-weed works, Pauline herself had wished to hasten affairs. What was the good of waiting another six months till she should be eighteen? They had better get married at once, without waiting for Lazare to look out for other employment. She ventured to say as much to her aunt, who, put out by the girl's frankness, had recourse to a lie. She closed the door, and whispered that Lazare was really rendered very unhappy by secret trouble. He was extremely sensitive, and it would pain him very much to marry her before he was able to bring her a fortune, now that he had compromised her own. The girl listened to all this with great astonishment, quite unable to understand any such romantic delicacy. What did it matter? Even if he had been very rich, she would have married him all the same, because she loved him. Besides, how long would they have to wait? For ever, very likely. Then Madame Chanteau protested, saying she would do what she could to persuade him to overcome this exaggerated sense of honour, if Pauline would only keep quiet and not try to hurry matters; and, in conclusion, she made her niece swear to say nothing on the subject, as she feared that the young man might do something foolish, perhaps suddenly leave home, if he found that his secret had been discovered and discussed. Pauline, whom her aunt's remarks filled with uneasiness, then promised to remain silent and patient. Chanteau, however, continued to grow more and more afraid of Saccard, and one day he said to his wife: 'If it can be managed, Pauline and Lazare had much better be married at once.'

'There is no hurry,' she said. 'The danger is not at the door yet.'

'But as they are to be married some day——You haven't changed your mind about it, eh? It will kill them if they are separated.'

'Kill them, indeed! As long as a thing is not done, it need not be done at all, if it should turn out inadvisable. But they are quite free to do as they like, and we shall see if they continue in the same mind.'

Pauline and Lazare had resumed all their old comradeship, while the terribly severe winter kept them both confined to the house. During the first week Lazare seemed so melancholy, and so ashamed of himself and embittered by his ill-fortune, that Pauline lavished all her tenderness upon him and treated him as gently as though he were an invalid. She felt great pity for that big young man, whose whimsical, enthusiastic temperament, and mere nervous courage accounted for all his failures, and she gradually began to assume a sort of scolding mother-like authority over him. At first he entirely lost his head and vowed that he would go and work as a mere peasant; then he gave himself up to all kinds of wild projects for making an immediate fortune, and declared that he would not remain a burden on his family for another day. But time slipped on, and he continually deferred putting his plans into execution. Every morning he came down with some new scheme which would at once lead to the greatest wealth and honour. Pauline, frightened by her aunt's lying confidences, scolded him and asked him if he supposed that anyone wanted him to go bothering himself in that way. It would be soon enough for him to look out for something to do when the spring came, and, no doubt, he would speedily be successful; but, till then, it was necessary for him to rest. At the end of a month she seemed to have gained the better of him, and he fell into a state of dreamy idleness and cynical resignation beneath what he called the burdens of life.

Every day now Pauline found some new trouble in Lazare which upset her. His previous outbursts of temper and his will-o'-the-wisp enthusiasm were preferable to this moody cynicism and bitter profession of scepticism. Pessimism acquired in Paris among fellow-students was reviving in him. The girl could understand that angry disgust at his failure—the catastrophe of the sea-weed scheme—lay at the bottom of his railings against life. But she was not able to divine the other influences at work in him, and had to confine herself to indignant protests when he reverted to his old philosophy—the denial of all progress and the futility of science. Wasn't that beast of a Boutigny on the high road to fortune with his wretched commercial soda? said Lazare. What was the good, then, of ruining one's self to make something better, to discover new laws and systems, when empiricism won the day? This was his constant strain, and he would finish by saying, with a bitter smile on his lips, that the only good thing science could do would be to discover a way to blow the whole universe into atoms by means of some colossal cartridge. Then he frigidly jested on the will-power that directs the world and the blind folly of wishing to live. All life, he said, was pain and trouble, and he adopted the doctrine of the Hindoo fakirs, that annihilation was the supreme blessing. When Pauline heard him affecting a horror and disgust of all active motion, and predicting the ultimate self-extinction of the nations, who one day—when their intelligence was highly enough developed to enable them to realise the imbecile, miserable part which an unknown power made them play—would refuse to beget fresh generations, she became indignant and tried to find arguments to confute him; but all to no avail, for she was quite ignorant of these matters, and, as her cousin told her, did not possess a metaphysical head. Still, she would not allow she was beaten, and roundly sent Schopenhauer to the devil when Lazare wanted to read some extracts from his works to her. Schopenhauer, indeed! A man who had written such horrid lies about women! If he had not shown a little affection for animals she would have strangled him! Vigorous with robust health herself, and full of cheerfulness and hope for the morrow, she at last reduced her cousin to silence by her merry laughter and youthful freshness.

'Stop! stop!' she would cry. 'You are talking nonsense. We will think about dying when we have grown old.'

The idea of death, which she spoke of so lightly, always affected him very painfully, and he quickly turned the conversation, after murmuring:

'People die at all ages.'

Pauline at last understood that the thought of death was terrible to Lazare. She called to mind his fear-stricken cry that night as they lay on the beach gazing at the stars. At the mention of certain things she saw him turn sickly pale, shut himself up in moody silence, as though he were concealing some disease whose existence he dared not confess. She was greatly surprised at the fear of personal extinction felt by this pessimist, who talked about snuffing out the stars like so many candles amid the wreck of the whole universe. This mental disease of Lazare's was of old standing, and the girl did not guess the dangerous hold that it had obtained upon her cousin. As he grew older, Lazare had seen death rise before him. Till he was twenty years of age but a faint chill had touched him when he went to bed. But now he could not lay his head on his pillow without the thought of Nevermore freezing his very blood. He tossed about, a prey to sleeplessness, and could not resign himself to the fatal necessity which presented itself so lugubriously to his imagination.

And when, from sheer exhaustion, he had at last fallen asleep, he would awake with a start, and spring up in bed, his eyes staring wildly with terror and his hands clutching one another, as he gasped in the darkness: 'O my God! my God!' He would pant for breath and believe that he was dying; and it was not till he had struck a light and thoroughly awakened himself that he regained anything like calmness. After these outbreaks of panic he always retained a feeling of shame that he had allowed himself to cry out to a God whose existence he denied, that he had yielded to the hereditary weakness of the human race in calling amidst its powerlessness for help. But every night he suffered in this way, and even during the daytime a chance word or a momentary thought, arising from something he saw or read, sufficed to throw him into a state of terror. One evening, as Pauline was reading a newspaper to her uncle, Lazare hastily rushed from the room, completely upset by the fancies of some story-teller who pictured the skies of the twentieth century filled with troops of balloons conveying travellers from continent to continent. He had thought that he would no longer be living then, that his eyes would never gaze upon those balloons, which vanished into far-away centuries, the idea of whose revolution, after his own complete extinction, filled him with anguish. It was to no purpose that philosophers reminded him that not a spark of life is ever utterly lost; the Ego within him ragefully refused to accept its fate. These inward struggles had already deprived him of his former cheerfulness; and when Pauline, who could not always follow the twists and turns of his morbid mind, looked at him at those times when tormenting shame prompted him to conceal his anguish, her heart melted with compassion; she burned to show her love and do all she could to make him happier.

Their days were spent in the big room on the second floor, amidst a litter of sea-weed, bottles, jars, and instruments, which Lazare had never had the energy to clear away. The sea-weed was falling to pieces and the bottles were growing discoloured, while the instruments were getting damaged by neglect. But in all this disorder Pauline and Lazare were alone and warm. Frequently did the December rains beat upon the slates of the roof from morning till night, while the west wind roared organ-like through the crevices of the woodwork. Whole weeks passed without sight of the sun, and there was nothing for the eye to rest upon save the grey sea—a grey immensity, in which the earth seemed to be melting away. Pauline found amusement for her unoccupied hours in classifying a collection of floridæ which she had gathered during the previous spring. At first Lazare, with his utter ennui, had just watched her as she mounted the delicate forms, whose soft blues and reds showed like water-colours; but afterwards, growing weary of his idleness, and forgetting his theory of inaction, he unearthed the piano from the litter of damaged appliances and dirty bottles beneath which it was buried. A week later his passion for music had resumed all its old sway over him. It was a revival of the artistic sense which lay beneath his failure as a scientist and a manufacturer. One morning, as he was playing his March of Death, the idea of the great symphony on Grief, which he had once thought of composing, excited him again. All that had been already written, except the March, was worthless, he thought; and the March was the only portion he would retain. But what a magnificent subject it was—what a task to perform! And how he might embody all his philosophy in it! He would commence with the creation of life by the selfish caprice of some superior power. Then would come the delusiveness of happiness and the mockery of life in striking passages, an embrace of lovers, a massacre of soldiers, and the death of a God upon the cross. Throughout everything a cry of woe should ascend; the groans of humankind should mount upwards to the skies, until came the final hymn of deliverance, a hymn whose melting sweetness should express all the happiness that came of universal annihilation.

The next morning he set enthusiastically to work, jingling, strumming on the piano, and covering sheets of paper with black bars. As the instrument was in a more feeble condition than ever, he sang the notes himself in a droning manner. Never had any of his previous fads taken such strong hold of him. He was so completely absorbed that he forgot his meals, and all but deafened poor Pauline, who, in her desire to please him, pretended that she liked it all very much, and neatly recopied portions of the score. This time he was quite sure that he had a masterpiece in hand.

But by-and-by his enthusiasm flagged. He had the whole score written except the introduction, and inspiration for that failed him. He would have to let it wait for a time, he said, and he smoked cigarettes, while his manuscript lay upon the table in front of him. Pauline played little bits from it on the piano, with all a beginner's clumsiness. It was now that the intimacy between the two young people began to assume a dangerous character. Lazare's brain was no longer occupied; and, shut up with Pauline in a state of idleness, he began to feel for her a warmer passion than before. She was so light-hearted and merry; so affectionate and devoted. At first he thought that all he felt was a mere impulse of gratitude, an amplification of that fraternal affection with which she had inspired him ever since childhood. But by degrees passion, hitherto dormant, awoke into life. In that younger brother he was at last beginning to recognise a woman; and he flushed as she did when he brushed against her. If their hands happened to meet, they both looked confused and their breath came quickly, while their cheeks crimsoned. And thus all the time they now spent alone together they felt troubled and ill at ease.

Sometimes, to relieve them from embarrassment, Pauline would begin to joke with all the frank boldness of her innocent, though well-read mind.

'By the way,' said she, one day, 'did I tell you that I dreamed that your favourite Schopenhauer had received tidings in the other world of our marriage, and that his ghost came to pay us a visit?'

Lazare laughed uneasily. He understood very well that she was poking fun at his inconsistencies, but his whole being was now thrilled with tenderness, which carried all his distaste for existence away.

'Don't be naughty, dear,' he said. 'You know that I love you.'

She assumed a chiding look.

'I am afraid you are inclined to put off the universal deliverance. You are grovelling in egotism and delusions again.'

'Hold your tongue, you wicked tease!'

He sprang up and chased her round the room, as she continued to hurl at him fragments of pessimistic philosophy with all the solemnity of a doctor of the Sorbonne. But when he caught hold of her, he no longer dared to keep her within his grasp, and pinch her for punishment as in olden time.

One day when he was chasing her round the room, and had succeeded in getting close, he clutched her by the waist. She broke into a ringing laugh, while he, holding her against the wardrobe, quivered with excitement as he felt her struggling.

'Ah! I have got you this time!' he cried.

Their faces were touching, and she still laughed, though in an uneasy manner.

'Please let me go,' she entreated. 'I won't be naughty any more.'

He roughly planted a kiss on her lips. Then the whole room appeared to swim round them and a hot feverish gust seemed to sweep them into space. She staggered, and then, with a sudden effort, released herself from her cousin's grasp. For a moment they both stood silent and confused, their cheeks crimson as they avoided each other's glance. At last Pauline dropped upon a chair to get her breath.

'You have hurt me, Lazare,' she said, speaking as though she were seriously displeased with him.

From that day he guarded himself from contact with her. His sense of honour rebelled against the thought of any disgraceful lapse; he was quite conscious that in heart and soul she was entirely his own; but he felt that respect and protection were her due, and that in dangerous dallying his would be the guilt alone. However, this very struggle on his part only served to increase his love. Everything lately had tended to fan its flame: the idleness of the first few weeks, his assumed indifference as to what became of him, his disgust with life, through which sprang a fresh passionate desire of life and love and even suffering, as occupation for his empty hours. And then music finally transported his mind, carrying him away to a land of dreams on spreading wings of melody. He began to believe that a mighty passion possessed him, and vowed to cultivate it for his genius' sake. He could no longer doubt it. He would be a great musician, for he need only hearken to the promptings of his heart. Everything then appeared to him purified; he felt content to worship Pauline on his knees, and did not even think of hurrying on their marriage.

'Come and read this letter I have just received,' said Chanteau in alarm one day to his wife, who had just come up from the village.

It was another letter from Saccard, and quite a threatening one. Ever since November he had been asking for a statement of the accounts of Pauline's fortune, and, as the Chanteaus had only replied by evasions and subterfuges, he now announced that he meant to lay the matter before the family council. Madame Chanteau, though she would not confess it, was quite as alarmed as her husband.

'The wretch!' she growled, when she had read the letter.

They looked at each other, quite pale and without finding a word to say. They already seemed to hear in that lifeless little dining-room the echoes of a disgraceful law-suit.

'There must be no more dilly-dallying,' resumed Chanteau. 'We must marry the girl at once, since marriage releases her from all control.'

But to his wife this expedient seemed to grow more distasteful every day. She expressed various fears. Who could tell if the two young folks would get on well together? It is quite possible for people to agree as friends, and yet to make each other perfectly miserable as man and wife. Lately, she said, various unpleasant things had struck her.

'No,' she added; 'it would be wrong to sacrifice them for the sake of our own peace. Let us wait a little longer. And, besides, should we gain any advantage by marrying her now? She was eighteen last month, and we can apply for legal emancipation.'

She was beginning to feel quite confident again. She went upstairs to get the Code, and they both pored over it together. Article 478 tranquillised them, but they felt uneasy again as they read Article 480, for there it was enacted that the accounts of a ward's estate must be submitted to a curator appointed by the family council. It was true that she could easily manage all the members of the council, and make them do what she wanted, but whom could she choose as curator? The difficulty was to find some easy-going man, instead of Saccard, the surrogate-guardian.

Suddenly she had an inspiration.

'I've got it,' she cried, 'Doctor Cazenove! He is somewhat in our confidence, and he won't refuse.'

Chanteau nodded approval. He continued, however, to look at his wife, as though revolving some thought in his mind.

'And so,' he said at last, 'you will hand over the money? What is left of it, I mean?'

Madame Chanteau remained silent for a moment. Her eyes sought the Code, whose pages she turned with nervous excitement. Then with an effort she replied:

'Of course; and it will be a great relief to me to do so, after the accusations that have already been made against us. Upon my word, it is enough to make one suspect oneself! I would give something to see the tiresome papers removed from my secrétaire to-night. And, anyway, we should always have to give them up to her.'

The next day, when Doctor Cazenove made his usual Saturday round in Bonneville, she mentioned the great service they awaited from his friendship. She made an open breast of the situation, and told him how the money had been swallowed up in the sea-weed works, without the family council having been consulted in the matter. Then she dwelt upon the intended marriage and the sad possibility of the bonds of affection which united them all together being torn asunder by the scandal of a law-suit.

Before promising his assistance the doctor desired to have an interview with Pauline. He had long suspected that she was being taken advantage of, and that her fortune was being gradually frittered away; and, though he had hitherto said nothing for fear of causing her pain, he felt that now, as he was being invited to become an accomplice, it was his duty to warn her. The interview took place in the girl's own room. At the commencement of the conversation her aunt was present. She had accompanied the Doctor to declare that the marriage now depended entirely on Pauline's emancipation from the family council's control, as Lazare would never consent to marry as long as it was possible for others to accuse him of doing so for the mere purpose of avoiding an examination of the accounts. Then she left the room, saying that she did not wish to do anything to affect the decision of the dear girl whom she already regarded as her darling daughter. Pauline, quite overcome with emotion, immediately begged the Doctor to render them the delicate service the necessity of which had just been made clear to him. It was to no purpose that Cazenove tried to explain the exact position of affairs to her, to show her that she was despoiling herself, reducing herself to a condition of absolute dependence, or that he revealed his own fears for the future—perfect ruin, possible ingratitude and suffering. At every gloomy suggestion she uttered indignant protests, refused to listen further, and showed a feverish haste to complete the sacrifice.

'No! no! don't try to make me regret things. I am really very avaricious at heart, though I don't let it appear. It has given me a world of trouble to conquer myself. Let them have everything. If they will only give me their love, they may have all that belongs to me!'

'And so,' asked the Doctor, 'it is affection for your cousin that leads you to strip yourself of your fortune?'

She blushed and did not reply.

'But suppose that after a time your cousin should cease to love you?'

She stared at him with a frightened look. Her eyes filled with big tears, and a cry of protesting love burst from her heart. 'No! no! Why do you torture me like this?'

Then Doctor Cazenove consented to do as she wished. He could not summon up the courage to amputate that generous heart of the illusions of love. Trouble would come to her soon enough.

Madame Chanteau conducted the campaign with astonishing brilliancy of intrigue. That struggle made her feel quite young again. She set off to Paris once more, taking along with her all the necessary powers and authorisations. She quickly won the members of the family council over to her own way of thinking. Those good people, indeed, had never troubled about their duties; they showed the indifference usual in such matters. The members of the council who came from Quenu's side of the family, cousins Naudet, Liardin, and Delorme, agreed with her at once; and as for the three on Lisa's side, it was only upon Octave Mouret that she had to expend any argument; the others, Claude Lantier and Rambaud, who were both then living at Marseilles, contented themselves with forwarding her their written consent. To all of them she poured out a moving, if somewhat confused, story, and spoke of the old Arromanches surgeon's affection for Pauline, and his manifest intention to leave her all his money should he be permitted to take her under his care. As for Saccard, he, too, acquiesced, as the others had done, after Madame Chanteau had paid him three visits and suggested a brilliant new idea to him, the formation of a ring in Normandy butter. Pauline's emancipation was formally pronounced by the family council, and the ex-naval surgeon Cazenove, of whom the Justice of the Peace had received the most satisfactory account, was nominated trustee.

A fortnight after Madame Chanteau's return to Bonneville the auditing of the guardianship accounts took place in the simplest manner. The Doctor had lunched with them, and they sat lingering round the table, discussing the latest news from Caen, whence Lazare had just returned after a two days' visit, taken thither by the threat of an action on the part of 'that scamp Boutigny.'

'By the way,' added the young man, 'Louise will give you all a surprise when you see her next week. When I saw her, I positively didn't recognise her. She is living with her father now, and has grown into quite a fashionable young lady. We had a very merry laugh over it.'

Pauline looked at him, feeling some surprise at the warmth of his tone.

'Talking of Louise,' interrupted Madame Chanteau, 'reminds me that I travelled with a lady from Caen who knew the Thibaudiers. I was quite thunderstruck when she told me that Thibaudier would give his daughter a dowry of a hundred thousand francs. With the other hundred thousand which she had from her mother the girl will have two hundred thousand. Two hundred thousand francs! She will be quite wealthy!'

'She could do very well without all that,' said Lazare, 'for she's quite charming. And so kittenish in her ways!'

A gloomy expression thereupon came into Pauline's eyes, and her lips twitched nervously. However, the Doctor, who had never ceased watching her, lifted up his little glass of rum, saying:

'Ah, we haven't clinked glasses yet! Here's to your health, my young friends! Get married quickly and have plenty of children.'

Without a smile Madame Chanteau slowly raised her glass; while her husband, to whom liqueurs were forbidden, contented himself with nodding his head approvingly. Lazare, however, had just caught hold of Pauline's hand with such an expression of affection that all the blood in her heart had come pulsing to her cheeks. Was she not, indeed, his good angel, whose love for him he would adorn with the brilliance of genius? She returned the pressure of his grasp. Then they all clinked glasses.

'To your hundredth birthday!' continued the Doctor, who considered that a hundred years was a good and proper age for a man to reach.

Lazare turned pale. The mention of those hundred years sent a painful thrill through him, reminding him of the time when he would have ceased to exist, the dread of which everlastingly lurked within his mind. In a hundred years where would he be, indeed? And what would he be? What stranger would be seated drinking wine at that table where he now sat? He raised his little glass with a trembling hand; while Pauline, who had grasped hold of the other, pressed it with a kind of maternal encouragement, as though she had seen the icy quiver of 'Nevermore!' passing over his pallid face. After a short interval of silence Madame Chanteau said very seriously, 'And now suppose we get our business over?'

She had settled that the formalities should be gone through in her own room. It would lend additional solemnity to them, she thought. Chanteau had been able to walk better since he had begun to take salicylic acid. With the help of the banisters he climbed the stairs behind his wife. Lazare talked about going on to the terrace to smoke a cigar there; but his mother called him back, and insisted upon his presence, which would only be seemly and proper, she said.

The Doctor and Pauline had already gone on before. Matthew, who looked at the procession with wondering eyes, followed in the rear.

'That dog is quite a nuisance!' cried Madame Chanteau, as she tried to shut the door. 'One can't go anywhere without being followed by him. Well! well! come in, then; I can't have you scratching outside. There! no one will come and disturb us now. Everything, you see, is quite ready.'

Some pens and an inkstand were all ready laid upon the table. In the room one found all the closeness and mournful silence that clings to places that are rarely occupied. Only Minouche spent her idle hours there, when she could manage to glide inside of a morning; and just now she happened to be lying asleep on the middle of the eider-down quilt. She raised her head in surprise at the invasion, and stared at the new-comers with her green eyes.

'Sit down! Sit down!' said Chanteau.

Then things were quickly settled. Madame Chanteau refrained from all share in the proceedings, leaving her husband to play the part in which she had been carefully coaching him since the day before. In conformity with the requirements of the law, the latter, ten days previously, had delivered to Pauline and the Doctor the accounts of his guardianship in a bulky volume, where the expenses were noted on one page and the receipts on the other. Everything was charged for, not only Pauline's board and lodging, but also the cost of the journeys to Paris and Caen. All that had to be done was to accept the accounts by a private deed. But Cazenove, taking his office of curator somewhat seriously, wanted an explanation about some of the expenses that had been incurred in connection with the sea-weed works, and compelled Chanteau to enter into details. Pauline cast a supplicating glance at the Doctor. What was the use of all this? She herself had assisted in the preparation of the accounts, which her aunt had copied out in her most elegant English—that is, angular—handwriting.

Meantime Minouche had sat up on the eider-down quilt, the better to view these strange proceedings. Matthew, after lying with his huge head stretched out on the carpet with an air of great wisdom, had just thrown himself on his back and was rolling and twisting about with noisy manifestations of joy.

'Oh, do make him be still, Lazare!' cried Madame Chanteau, quite impatient of the disturbance. 'One can't hear one's self speak!'

The young man was looking out of the window, following a far-off white sail with his eyes in order to conceal his embarrassment. He experienced a feeling of deep shame as he listened to his father, who was giving a detailed account of the money lost in the works.

'Make a little less noise, Matthew!' he cried, reaching out his foot.

The dog thought he was going to have his belly rubbed, a proceeding which he dearly loved, and he grew more demonstrative than ever. Happily, there was now nothing more to be done than to affix the signatures. Pauline, with a stroke of her pen, hastened to signify her approval of everything. Then the Doctor, as if regretfully, scrawled a huge flourish over the stamped paper. Painful silence fell.

'The assets,' said Madame Chanteau, breaking the silence, 'amount, then, to seventh-five thousand two hundred and ten francs thirty centimes. I will now hand that sum to Pauline.'

She stepped towards the secrétaire and lowered the lid, which gave out the creak that had so often distressed her. But just now she was very grave, and, when she opened the drawer, they saw the old ledger-binding inside. It was the same as before, with its green-marble pattern stained with grease spots, but it was not nearly so bulky; as the scrip was removed it had grown thinner and thinner.

'No! no! aunt,' exclaimed Pauline, 'keep it!'

Madame Chanteau protested:

'We are giving in our accounts,' she said, 'and we must give up the money as well. It is your property. You remember what I said to you when I put it there eight years ago? We don't want to take a copper of it for ourselves.'

She drew out the papers and insisted on her niece counting them. There was scrip for seventy-five thousand francs, and a small packet of gold, wrapped up in a piece of newspaper, completed the balance.

'But where am I to put it all?' asked Pauline, whose cheeks flushed at the handling of so much money.

'Lock it up in one of your drawers,' her aunt replied. 'You are now big enough to take care of your own money. I don't want to see it again myself. Stay! if you really find it so troublesome, give it to Minouche, who is looking very attentively at you.'

Now that the Chanteaus had settled their accounts, their cheerfulness returned. Lazare, quite at his ease, began playing with the dog, making him try to catch hold of his tail, in such wise that he bent and twisted his spine and spun round and round like a top. Doctor Cazenove, for his part, had already entered upon his duties as trustee, and was promising Pauline to receive her dividends for her and advise her on the question of investments.

And precisely at that moment Véronique was bustling about amongst her pans down below. She had crept upstairs, and, with her ear at the keyhole, had overheard the statement of accounts. For several weeks past a slowly growing feeling of pity and affection for Pauline had been driving away her remaining prejudices against the girl.

''Pon my word, they have swindled her out of half her money!' she angrily growled. 'It's not right! Although she had no business to come and settle herself down here, still that was no reason why they should strip her as bare as a worm. No! no! I know what is right, and I shall end by quite loving the poor child!'

IV

On the following Saturday, when Louise, who had come on a two months' visit to the Chanteaus, stepped on to the terrace, she found the family there. The hot August day was drawing to a close, and a cool breeze rose up from the sea. Abbé Horteur had already made his appearance, and was playing draughts with Chanteau. Madame Chanteau sat near them, embroidering a handkerchief; and, a few yards further away, Pauline stood in front of a stone seat on which she had placed four children from the village, two little lads and two little girls.

'What! you have got here already!' cried Madame Chanteau. 'I was just folding up my work to go and meet you at the cross-roads.'

Louise gaily explained that old Malivoire had flown along like the wind. She was all right, she said, and did not even want to change her dress; and, while her godmother went off to see about her room, she hung her hat on the hasp of a shutter. She kissed them all round, and then, all smiling and caressing, threw her arms round Pauline's waist.

'Now, look at me,' she said. 'Good gracious! how we have grown! I'm turned nineteen now, you know, and am getting quite an old maid.'

And after a moment's silence she added rapidly:

'By the way, I must congratulate you. Oh! don't look so shy! I hear it is settled for next month.'

Pauline had returned her caresses with the grave affection of an elder sister, although in reality she was the younger by some eighteen months. A slight blush rose to her cheeks at the reference to her marriage with Lazare.

'Oh, no! you have been misinformed, really,' she replied. 'Nothing is definitely fixed, but it will perhaps be some time in the autumn.'

Madame Chanteau, when pressed on the subject, had indeed spoken of the autumn, in spite of her unwillingness to commit herself to the match, an unwillingness which the two young people were beginning to notice. She was again beginning to harp upon her old excuse for delay, saying that she should much prefer them waiting till Lazare should have acquired some definite position.

'Ah! I see,' said Louise, 'you want to make a secret of it. Well, never mind; but you'll ask me to come, won't you? Where's Lazare? Isn't he here?'

Chanteau, who had just suffered a defeat at the hands of the priest, here joined in the conversation, saying:

'Haven't you seen anything of him, Louise? We were expecting you to get here together. He has gone to Bayeux to make an application to the Sub-Prefect, but he will be back again this evening—almost directly, I should think.'

Then he turned to the draught-board to commence a fresh game.

'I move first this time, Abbé. We shall manage to get those famous dykes made, I fancy; for the department surely can't refuse to make us a grant to help on the undertaking.'

He was referring to a new scheme which Lazare had taken up with his usual enthusiasm. During the spring-tides of the previous March the sea had again carried away a couple of houses at Bonneville. Devoured bit by bit on its narrow bed of shingle, the village, it was clear, would be driven to the very cliff unless some substantial protecting works were quickly built. But the little place, with its thirty cottages, was of such slight importance in the world that Chanteau, as Mayor, had for the last ten years been vainly calling the Sub-Prefect's attention to the perilous position of the villagers. At last Lazare, spurred on by Pauline, whose great wish was to see her cousin actively employed, had conceived a grand idea of a system of piles and breakwaters which would keep back the ravages of the sea. However, money was wanted, and at least twelve thousand francs would be necessary.

'Ah! I must huff you, my friend,' said the priest, taking one of Chanteau's pieces.

Then he launched out into details of old Bonneville.

'The old folks say that there was once a farm below the church, quite half a mile and more from the present shore. For five hundred years the sea has been gradually eating away the land. It is surely a punishment for the sins of their ancestors.'

Pauline, however, had now returned to the stone seat, where the four young ones were waiting, dirty, ragged, and open-mouthed.

'Who is it you've got there?' Louise asked her, not daring to venture too near them.

'Oh! they are some little friends of mine,' Pauline replied.

The girl's active charity now spread all over the neighbourhood. She had an instinctive affection for the wretched, and she was never repelled by their forlorn condition. She even carried this feeling so far as to patch up the broken legs of fowls with splinters of wood, and to set bowls of pap outside at night for homeless cats. Distress of every kind was a source of continual occupation to her, and to alleviate it was her great pleasure. So the poor flocked round her with outstretched hands, just as pilfering sparrows swarm round the open windows of a corn-loft. All Bonneville, with its handful of fishermen thrown into distress by the sweeping spring-tides, came up to see the 'young lady,' as they called her. But it was the children who were her especial favourites, the little things with ragged clothes, through which their pink flesh peeped, poor, frail-looking, half-fed creatures, whose eyes glistened wolfishly at the slices of bread and butter that she brought out for them. The cunning parents took advantage of Pauline's love for the children, making it a custom to send her the most sickly and ragged that they had, in order that they might increase her commiseration.

'You see,' she said, with a smile, 'I have my day at home, Saturday, just like a fashionable lady, and my friends come to see me. Now, now! little Gonin, just give over pinching that silly Houtelard. I shall be cross with you if you don't behave better. Now, we will begin in order.'

Then the distribution commenced. She lectured them, and hustled them about in quite a maternal manner. The first she called up to her was young Houtelard, a lad of some ten years, with a sallow complexion and a gloomy timid expression. He began to show her his leg. A big strip of skin had been torn from the knee, and his father had sent him to let the young lady see it, so that she might give him something for it. It was Pauline who supplied arnica and liniments to all the country round. The pleasure she took in healing had resulted in the gradual acquisition of a complete collection of drugs, of which she was very proud. When she had attended to the lad's knee, she lowered her voice and proceeded to give Louise some particulars about his relations.

'They are quite well-to-do people, those Houtelards, you know; the only well-to-do fisher-folks in Bonneville. That big smack, you know, belongs to them. But they are frightfully avaricious, and live real dogs' lives in the midst of the most horrible filth. The worst of it all is that the father, after beating his wife to death, has married his servant, a dreadful woman, who is even harsher than himself, and between them they are gradually murdering the poor child.'

Then, without taking notice of her friend's repugnance, she raised her voice again, and called another of the children.

'Now, little one, you come here; have you drunk your bottle of quinine-wine?'

This child was the little daughter of Prouane, the verger. She looked like an infant Saint Theresa, marked all over with scrofula, flushed and frightfully thin, with big eyes, in which hysteria was already gleaming. She was eleven years old, but seemed to be scarcely seven.

'Yes, Mademoiselle,' she stammered; 'I have drunk it all.'

'You little story-teller!' cried the priest, without taking his eyes from the draught-board. 'Your father smelt strongly of wine last night.'

Pauline looked extremely annoyed. The Prouanes had no boat, but made their living by catching crabs and shrimps and gathering mussels. With the additional profits of the vergership they might have lived in decent comfort if it had not been for their drinking habits. The father and mother were often to be seen lying in their doorway stupefied by 'calvados,' the strong, raw, cyder-brandy of Normandy, while the little girl stepped over their legs to drain their glasses. When no 'calvados' was to be had, Prouane drank his daughter's quinine-wine.

'And to think I took so much trouble to make it for you!' said Pauline. 'Well, for the future, I shall keep the bottle here, and you will have to come up every afternoon at five o'clock. And I will give you a little minced raw meat. The doctor has ordered it for you.'

It was next the turn of a big twelve-year-old boy, Cuche's son, a lean and scraggy stripling. Pauline gave him a loaf, some stewed meat, and also a five-franc piece. His was another wretched story. After the destruction of their house Cuche had deserted his wife, and gone to live with a female cousin, and the wife was now taking refuge in an old dilapidated Coastguard watch-house, where she led an immoral life. The lad, who kept with her and shared the little she had, was almost starving, but whenever any suggestion was made of rescuing him from that wretched den he bolted off like a wild goat. Louise turned her head away with an air of disgust when Pauline, without the slightest embarrassment, told her the boy's story. She, Pauline, had grown up in a free unrestrained way, and looked with charity's unflinching eye upon the vices of humanity. Louise, on the other hand, initiated into knowledge of life by ten years spent at boarding-schools, blushed at the ideas which Pauline's words suggested. In her estimation these were matters which people thought of, but should not mention.

'The other little girl there,' Pauline went on, 'that fair-haired little child, who is so rosy and bonny, is the daughter of the Gonins, with whom that rascal Cuche has taken up his quarters. She is nine years old. The Gonins were once very comfortably off, and had a smack of their own, but the father was attacked with paralysis in the legs, a very common complaint in our villages about here, and Cuche, who was only a common seaman to begin with, soon made himself the master. Now the whole house belongs to him, and he bullies the poor old man, who passes his days and nights inside an old coal-chest, while Cuche and the wife lord it over him. I look after the child myself, but I am sorry to say she comes in for a good many cuffings at home, and is unfortunately much too shrewd and noticing.'

Here Pauline stopped and turned to the child to question her.

'How are they all getting on at home?' she asked.

The child had watched Pauline while the latter was explaining matters in an undertone. Her pretty but vicious face smiled slyly at what she guessed was being said.

'Oh, they've beaten him again,' she said, still continuing to smile. 'Last night mother got up and caught hold of a log of wood. Ah! Mademoiselle, it would be very good of you to give father a little wine, for they have put an empty jug by the chest, telling him that he may drink till he bursts.'

Louise made a gesture of disgust. What horrible people! How could Pauline take any interest in such dreadful things? Was it really possible that near a big town like Caen there existed such hideous places, where people lived in that utterly barbarous fashion?[4] For, surely, they could be nothing less than savages, to thus trample under foot all law, both divine and human.

'There! there! I have had quite enough of your young friends,' she said, in a low tone, as she went to sit down near Chanteau. 'I should not mourn for them very much if the sea were to sweep them all away.'

The Abbé had just crowned a king.

'Sodom and Gomorrah!' he cried. 'I have been warning them for the last twenty years. Well, it will be so much the worse for them.'

'I have asked to have a school built here,' said Chanteau, feeling a little distressed, as he saw the game going against him; 'but there aren't people enough. The children ought to go to Verchemont, but they don't like school, and only play about on the roads when they are sent there.'

Pauline looked up in surprise. If the poor things were clean, she was thinking, there would be no necessity to attempt to make them so. Wickedness and wretchedness went together, and she felt in no way repelled by suffering, even when it seemed to be the consequence of vice. But she confined herself to asserting her charitable tolerance with a gesture of protest. Then she went on to promise little Gonin that she would go to see her father; and while she was doing so Véronique appeared upon the scene, pushing another little girl in front of her.

'Here's another, Mademoiselle.'

The new-comer, who was very young, certainly not more than five years old, was completely in rags, with black face and matted hair. With all the readiness of one already accustomed to begging on the high-roads she at once began to whine and groan:

'Please take pity upon me. My poor father has broken his leg——'

'It's Tourmal's girl, isn't it?' asked Pauline of Véronique.

But before the servant could reply the priest broke out angrily:

'The little hussy! Don't take any notice of her. Her father has been pretending to break his leg for the last five-and-twenty years. They are a family of swindlers, who only live by thieving. The father helps the smugglers. The mother pilfers in all the fields about Verchemont, and the grandfather prowls about at night, stealing oysters from the Government beds at Roqueboise. You can see for yourselves what they are making of their daughter—a little thief and a beggar, whom they send to people's houses to lay her hands upon anything that may happen to be lying about. Just look how she is glancing at my snuff-box!'

The child's eyes, indeed, after inquisitively examining every corner of the terrace, had flashed brightly on catching sight of the priest's old snuff-box. She was not in the slightest degree abashed by the Abbé's account of her family history, but repeated her petition as calmly as though he had not spoken a word.

'He has broken his leg. Please, kind young lady, help us with a trifle.'

This time Louise broke out into a laugh. That little five-year-old impostor, who was already as scampish as her parents, quite amused her. Pauline, however, remained perfectly grave and serious, and took a new five-franc piece from her purse.

'Now, listen to me,' she said; 'I will give you as much every Saturday if I hear a good account of you during the week.'

'Look after the spoons, then,' Abbé Horteur cried, 'or she will walk off with some of them.'

Pauline made no reply to this remark, but dismissed the children, who slouched off with exclamations of 'Thank you kindly' and 'May God reward you!'

While this scene had been taking place Madame Chanteau, who had just come back from the house, whither she had gone to give a glance at Louise's room, was muttering with vexation at Véronique. It was quite intolerable that the servant should take upon herself to introduce those wretched beggars. Mademoiselle herself brought quite sufficient of them to the house. A lot of scum, who robbed her of her money and then laughed at her! Of course the money was her own, and she could play ducks and drakes with it if she were so disposed, but it was really becoming quite immoral to encourage vice in this way. She had heard Pauline promise a hundred sous a week to the little Tourmal girl. Another twenty francs a month! The fortune of an emperor would not suffice for such perpetual extravagance!

'You know very well,' she said to Pauline, 'that I hate to see that little thief here. Though you are now the mistress of your fortune, I cannot allow you to ruin yourself so foolishly. I am morally responsible. Yes, my dear, I repeat that you are ruining yourself, and more quickly than you have any notion of.'

Véronique, who had gone back to her kitchen, fuming with anger at Madame Chanteau's reprimand, now reappeared.

'The butcher's here!' she cried roughly. 'He wants his bill settled; forty-six francs ten centimes.'

A pang of vexation curtailed Madame Chanteau's remarks. She fumbled in her pocket, and then, assuming an expression of surprise, she whispered to Pauline:

'Have you got as much about you, my dear? I have no change here, and I shall have to go upstairs. I will give it you back very shortly.'

Pauline went off with the servant to pay the butcher. Since she had begun to keep her money in her chest of drawers the same old comedy had been enacted each time a bill was presented for payment. It was a systematic levy of small amounts which had grown to be quite a matter of course. Her aunt no longer troubled to go and withdraw the money herself, but asked Pauline for it, and thus made the girl rob herself with her own hands. At first there had been a pretence of settling accounts, and sums of ten and fifteen francs had been repaid to her, but afterwards matters got so complicated that a settlement was deferred till later on, when the marriage should take place. Yet, in spite of all this, they took care that she should pay for her board with the greatest punctuality on the first day of every month, the sum due in this respect being now raised to ninety francs.

'There's some more of your money making itself scarce!' growled Véronique in the passage. 'If I had been you, I would have told her to go and find her change. It is abominable that you should be plundered in this way!'

When Pauline came back with the receipted account, which she handed to her aunt, the priest was radiant with triumph. Chanteau was vanquished; he had not a piece which he could move. The sun was setting, and the sea was crimsoned by its oblique rays, while the tide lazily rose. Louise, with a far-off look in her eyes, smiled at the bright and wide-stretching horizon.

'There's our little Louise up in the clouds,' said Madame Chanteau. 'I have had your trunk taken upstairs, Louisette. We are next-door neighbours again.'

Lazare did not return home till the following day. After his visit to the Sub-Prefect at Bayeux he had taken it into his head to go on to Caen and see the Prefect. And, though he was not bringing an actual subvention back in his pocket, he was convinced, he said, that the General Council[5] would vote at the least a sum of twelve thousand francs. The Prefect had accompanied him to the door and had bound himself by formal promises, saying that it was impossible Bonneville should be left to its fate, and that the authorities were quite prepared to back up the efforts of the inhabitants. Lazare, however, could not help feeling despondent, for he foresaw all sorts of delays, and the least delay in the carrying-out of one of his schemes proved agony to him.

'Upon my word of honour,' he cried, 'if I had the twelve thousand francs myself, I should be delighted to advance them! For the first experimental proceedings, indeed, so much would not be necessary. When we do get the money voted, you will see what a heap of worries and delays we shall have to go through. We shall have all the engineers in the department down here on our backs. But if we could make a start without them, they would be obliged to acquiesce in what had actually been done. The Prefect, to whom I briefly explained our plans, was quite struck with their advantage and simplicity.'

The hope of overpowering the sea now thrilled him feverishly. He had felt bitter rancour against it ever since he had considered it responsible for his failure with the sea-weed scheme; and, though he did not venture to openly revile it, he harboured the thought of coming vengeance. And what revenge could be better than to stay it in its course of blind destruction, and call out to it, like its master, 'Thus far and no farther'?

There was, also, in this enterprise an element of philanthropy which, joined to the grandeur of the contemplated struggle, brought his excitement to a climax. When his mother saw him spending his days cutting out pieces of wood and burying his nose in treatises on mechanics, she thought, with trembling, of his grandfather, the enterprising but blundering carpenter, whose useless masterpiece lay slumbering in its glass case on the mantelshelf. Was the old man going to live over again in his grandson to consummate the ruin of the family? Then she gradually allowed herself to be convinced and won over by the son whom she worshipped. If he were successful, and, of course, he would be successful, this would be the first step to fame, glorious and disinterested work which would make him celebrated. With this as a starting-point he might easily soar as high as ambition might prompt him. Henceforth the whole family dreamt of nothing but conquering the sea and of chaining it to the foot of the terrace, submissive like a whipped dog.

Lazare's scheme was, as he had said, one of great simplicity. He proposed to drive big piles into the sand, and to cover them with planks. Behind these the shingle, swept up by the tide, would form a sort of impregnable wall against which the waves would break powerlessly, and, by this means, the sea itself would build the barrier which was to keep it back. A number of groynes, built of long beams carried upon strong rafters forming a breakwater in front of the wall of shingle, would complete the works. Afterwards, if they had the necessary funds, they might construct two or three big stockades, whose solid mass would restrain the very highest tides. Lazare had found the first idea of his scheme in a 'Carpenter's Complete Handbook,' a little volume with quaint engravings, which had probably been bought long ago by his grandfather. He elaborated and perfected the idea, and went into the matter pretty deeply, studying the theory of forces and the resistance of which the different materials were capable, and manifesting considerable pride in a certain disposition and inclination of the beams, which, said he, could not fail to insure absolute success.

Pauline once more showed great interest in her cousin's studies. Like the young man's, her curiosity was always aroused by experiments in strange things. But, with her more calculating nature, she did not deceive herself as to the possibility of failure. When she saw the tide mount up, her eyes wandered with an expression of doubt to the models which Lazare had made, the miniature piles and groynes and stockades. The big room was now quite full of them.

One night the girl lingered till very late at her window. For the last two days her cousin had been talking of burning all his models; and one evening, as they all sat round the table, he had exclaimed in a sudden outburst that he was going off to Australia, as there was no room for him in France. Pauline was meditating over all this by her window, while the flood-tide dashed against Bonneville in the darkness. Each shock of the waves made her quiver, and she seemed to hear, at regular intervals, the cries of poor creatures whom the sea was swallowing up. Then the struggle which was still waging within her between love of money and natural kindliness became unendurable, and she closed the window, that she might no longer hear. But the distant blows still seemed to shake her as she lay in bed. Why not try to attempt even what seemed impossible? What would it matter, throwing all this money into the sea, if there were yet a single chance of saving the village? And she fell asleep at daybreak dreaming of the joy her cousin would feel when he should find himself released from all his brooding melancholy, set at last perhaps on the right path, happy through her, indebted to her for everything.

In the morning, before going downstairs, she called him. She was laughing.

'Do you know that last night I dreamt that I had lent you those twelve thousand francs?'

But Lazare became angry and refused in violent words: 'Do you want to make me set off and never come back again? No! we lost quite enough over the sea-weed works. I am really dying of shame about it, though I told you nothing.'

Two hours later, however, he accepted Pauline's offer, and pressed her hands in a passionate outburst of gratitude. It was to be an advance and nothing more. Her money would be running no risk, for there was not the least doubt that the subvention would be voted by the Council, the more especially if operations were actually commenced. That very evening the Arromanches carpenter was called in. There were endless consultations and walks along the coast, with a perpetual discussion of estimates. The whole family went wild over the scheme.

Madame Chanteau, however, had first flown into a tantrum on hearing of the loan of the twelve thousand francs. Lazare was astonished, unable to understand. His mother overwhelmed him with strange arguments. No doubt, said she, Pauline advanced small sums to them from time to time, but, if this kind of thing were to go on, she would begin to think herself indispensable. It would have been better to have asked Louise's father for an advance. Louise herself, who would have a dowry of two hundred thousand francs, did not make nearly so much fuss about her money. Those two hundred thousand francs of Louise's were ever on Madame Chanteau's lips, and seemed to fill her with angry contempt for the remnants of that other fortune which had dwindled away in the secrétaire and was still dwindling in the chest of drawers.

Chanteau, too, instigated by his wife, pretended to be greatly vexed. Pauline felt very much hurt. She recognised that they loved her less now, even though she was giving them her money. There seemed to be a bitter feeling against her, which increased day by day, though she could not even guess the cause of it. As for Doctor Cazenove, he found fault with her, too, when she mentioned the subject to him as a matter of form, but he had been obliged to acquiesce in all the loans, the large as well as the small ones. His office of trustee was a mere fiction; he found himself quite disarmed in that house, where he was always received as an old friend. On the day when the twelve thousand francs were lent to Lazare he renounced all further responsibility.

'My dear,' he said, as he took Pauline aside, 'I cannot go on being your accomplice. Don't consult me any more; ruin yourself just as you like. You know very well that I can never resist your entreaties; but I am really very much troubled about them afterwards. I would rather remain ignorant of what I cannot approve.'

Pauline looked at him, deeply moved. After a moment's silence she replied:

'Thank you, my dear friend. But am I not really taking the right course? If it makes me happy, what does anything else matter?'

He took her hands within his own and pressed them in a fatherly manner, with an expression of affection that was tinged with sadness.

'Well! if it does make you happy! After all, one has to pay quite as much sometimes to make one's self miserable.'

As might have been expected, in the enthusiasm of his approaching struggle with the sea Lazare had entirely abandoned his music. There was a coating of dust upon the piano, and the score of his great symphony was put away at the bottom of a drawer; a service which he owed to Pauline, who collected the different sheets together, finding some of them hidden even behind the furniture. With certain portions of the work he had grown much dissatisfied, and had begun to think that the celestial joy of final annihilation, which he had expressed in a somewhat commonplace fashion in waltz time, would be better rendered by a very slow march. One evening, indeed, he had declared that he would re-write the whole work when he had the leisure.

His flash of desire and feeling of uneasiness in the society of his young cousin seemed to disappear when his musical enthusiasm drooped. His masterpiece must be deferred to a more suitable time, and his passion, which he also seemed able to advance or retard, must be similarly postponed. He again began to treat Pauline as an old friend or long since wedded wife, who would fall into his arms as soon as ever he chose to open them. Since April they had not shut themselves up in the house so much, and the fresh air brought life and colour to their cheeks. The big room was deserted, while they rambled about the rocky shore of Bonneville, studying the best situations for the piles and stockades. And, after dabbling about in the water, they came home as tired and as easy in mind as in the far-away days of childhood. When Pauline sometimes played the famous March of Death to tease him, Lazare would cry out:

'Do be quiet! What a lot of rubbish!'

On the evening of the carpenter's visit, however, Chanteau was seized with another attack of gout. He now had a fresh attack almost every month. The salicylic treatment, which at first had given him some relief, seemed in the end to add to the violence of his seizures. For a fortnight Pauline remained a close prisoner at her uncle's bedside. Lazare, who was continuing his investigations on the beach, then invited Louise to go with him, by way of freeing her from the cries of the sick man, which quite frightened her. As she occupied the guests' bedroom, the one just above Chanteau's, she had to stuff her fingers into her ears and bury her head in the pillows at night-time in order to get some sleep. But when she was out of doors she became radiant again, enjoying the walk immensely and forgetting all about the poor man groaning in the house.

They had a delightful fortnight. The young man had at first gazed on his companion with surprise. She was a great change from Pauline; she cried out whenever a crab scuttled past her shoe, and was so frightened of the sea that she thought she was going to be drowned whenever she had to jump over a pool. The shingle hurt her little feet, she never relinquished her sunshade, and was for ever gloved up to her elbows, being in a constant state of fear lest her delicate skin should be exposed to the sun's rays. After his first astonishment, however, Lazare allowed himself to be attracted by her pretty airs of timidity, and her weakness, that ever seemed to be appealing to him for assistance. She did not smell simply of the breezy air, like Pauline; she intoxicated him with a warm odour of heliotrope, and he no longer had a boy-like companion at his side, but a young woman, whose presence now and then sent his blood pulsing hotly through his veins. True, she was not as pretty as Pauline; she was older, and seemed already a little faded, but there was a bewitching charm about her; her small limbs moved with easy supple motion, and her whole coquettish figure seemed instinct with promises of bliss. She appeared to Lazare to be quite a discovery on his part; he could recognise in her no trace of the scraggy little girl he had formerly known. Was it really possible that long years at boarding-school had turned that very ordinary-looking child into such a disquieting young woman, who, maiden though she was, seemed by no means shy? Little by little Lazare found himself possessed by growing admiration, disturbing passion, in which the mere friendship of childhood disappeared.

When Pauline was able to leave her uncle's bedroom and resume companionship with Lazare, she immediately noticed a change between him and Louise, unaccustomed glances and laughs, in which she had no share. For the first few days she maintained a sort of maternal attitude, treating the pair as foolish young things whom a mere nothing was sufficient to amuse. But she soon grew low-spirited, and the walks they all took abroad seemed to weary her. She never made any complaint, she simply spoke of persistent headaches; but, later on, when her cousin advised her to stay at home, she became vexed, and would not quit him even in the house. On one occasion, about two o'clock in the morning, Lazare, who had sat up in his room working at a plan, thought he heard some steps outside, and opened his door to look. Thereupon he was astonished to see Pauline in her petticoats leaning over the banisters in the dark, and listening. She declared that she thought she had heard a cry downstairs. But she blushed as she told this fib, and Lazare did the same, for a suspicion flashed through his mind. From that night forward, without anything being said, friendly relations suffered. Lazare considered that Pauline made herself very ridiculous by pouting and sulking about mere nothings, while she, continually growing more gloomy, never once left her cousin alone with Louise, but kept a strict watch over them, and tortured herself with fancies at night if she had caught them speaking softly to each other as they walked home from the shore.

However, the work had begun. A body of carpenters, after nailing a number of heavy planks across a framework of piles, succeeded in completing a first buttress against the sea's attack. This was simply meant as a trial, which they hurried along with, in expectation of a flood tide. If the timbers should be able to resist the sea's approach, then the system of defence would be completed. It unfortunately happened that the weather was execrable. Rain fell continually, and all Bonneville got soaked to the skin in going out to see the piles rammed into the sand. Then, on the morning when the high tide was expected, an inky pall hung over the sea, and, from eight o'clock the rain fell with redoubled violence, hiding the horizon with a dense cold mist. There was immense disappointment, for the Chanteaus had been planning to go in a family party to watch the victory which their beams and piles would win over the attacking flood.

Madame Chanteau determined to remain at home with her husband, who was still far from well. Great efforts, too, were made to induce Pauline to stay indoors, as she had been suffering from a sore throat for a week past, and always grew a little feverish towards the evening. But she rejected all the prudent advice that was offered her, resolving to go down to the beach, since Lazare and Louise were going. Louise, fragile as she appeared to be, ever, so it seemed, on the verge of fainting, really proved a girl of great physical endurance, particularly when any kind of pleasure made her excited.

They all three set off after breakfast. A sudden breeze had swept away the clouds, and glad smiles hailed the unexpected change. The patches of blue sky overhead were so large, though they still mingled with black masses, that the girls refused to take any other protection than their sun-shades. Lazare alone carried an umbrella. He would see that they came to no harm, he said, and would place them under shelter somewhere should the rain begin to fall again.

Pauline and Louise walked on in front. However, on the steep slope leading down towards Bonneville, the latter stumbled on the wet and slippery soil, and Lazare rushed up to support her. Pauline then followed behind them. Her high spirits quickly fell, as with a jealous glance she noticed her cousin's arm pressed closely against Louise's waist. The contact of the two soon absorbed her; all else disappeared—the beach, where the fishermen of the neighbourhood stood waiting in a somewhat scoffing mood, and the rising tide, and the stockade already white with foam. Away on the right arose a mass of dark clouds, lashed on by the gale.

'What a nuisance!' said the young man; 'we are going to have more rain. But we shall have time to see things before it comes on, I think, and then we can take refuge close at hand with the Houtelards.'

The tide, which had the wind against it, was rising with irritating slowness. The wind would certainly keep it from mounting as high as had been expected. Still no one left the shore. The new groyne, which was now half covered, seemed to work very satisfactorily, parting the waves, whose diverted waters foamed up to the very feet of the spectators. But the greatest triumph was the successful resistance of the piles. As each wave dashed against them, sweeping the shingle with it, they heard the stones falling and collecting on the other side of the beams with a noise like the sudden discharge of a cartload of pebbles; and this wall which was thus gradually building itself up seemed to guarantee success.

'Didn't I tell you so?' cried Lazare. 'You won't make any more jokes about it now, I think!'

Prouane, who was standing near him, and had not been sober for the last three days, shook his head, however, as he stammered: 'We shall see about that when the wind blows against it.'

The other fishermen kept silent. But the expression on the faces of Cuche and Houtelard plainly showed that they felt little confidence in all such contrivances; indeed, they would scarcely have felt pleased to see their enemy the sea, which crushed them so victoriously, beaten back by that stripling of a landsman. How they would laugh when the waves some day carried off those beams like so many straws! The very village might be dashed to pieces at the same time; it would be rare fun all the same!

Suddenly the rain began to fall; great drops poured from the lurid clouds, which had covered three-quarters of the sky.

'Oh! this is nothing!' cried Lazare in a state of wild enthusiasm. 'Let's stay a little longer. Just look! not a single pile moves!' While speaking he set his umbrella over Louise's head. She pressed to his side with the air of a frightened turtle-dove. Pauline, whom they seemed to have forgotten, never ceased to watch them. She felt enraged; the warmth of their clasp seemed to set her cheeks on fire. But the rain was now coming down in a perfect torrent, and Lazare suddenly turned round and called to her: 'What are you thinking of? Are you mad? At all events, open your sunshade!'

She was standing stiffly erect beneath the downpour, which she did not seem to notice. And she simply answered in a hoarse voice: 'Leave me alone. I am all right.'

'Oh! Lazare!' cried Louise, quite distressed, 'make her come here! There is room under the umbrella for all three of us.'

But Pauline, in her angry obstinacy, did not condescend to notice the invitation. She was all right; why couldn't they let her alone? And when Lazare, at the conclusion of his fruitless entreaties, finished by saying: 'It's folly! Let's run to the Houtelards!' she answered rudely, 'Run wherever you like. I came here to see, and I mean to stop.'

The fishermen had fled. Pauline remained alone beneath the pouring rain, with her eyes turned towards the piles, which were now covered by the waves. The spectacle seemed to absorb all her attention, in spite of the grey mist which was rising from the rain-beaten sea, obscuring everything. Big black marks appeared on her streaming dress, about her shoulders and arms, but she would not leave her place till the west wind had swept the storm-cloud away.

They all three returned home in silence. Not a word of what had happened was mentioned to Madame Chanteau. Pauline hurried off to change her clothes, while Lazare recounted the complete success of the experiment. In the evening, as they sat at table, Pauline became feverish, but she pretended there was nothing the matter with her, in spite of the evident difficulty she had in swallowing her food; and she even ended by speaking very roughly to Louise, who evinced solicitude in her caressing way, and perpetually asked her how she felt.

'The girl is really growing quite unbearable with her bad disposition,' murmured Madame Chanteau behind Pauline's back. 'We had better give over speaking to her.'

About one o'clock in the morning Lazare was roused by a hoarse cough, which sounded so distressingly that he sat up in bed to listen. At first he thought it came from his mother; then, as he went on straining his ear, he heard a noise as of something falling, and his floor shook. Forthwith he jumped out of bed and hastily put on his clothes. It could only be Pauline, who must have fallen on the other side of the wall. He broke several matches with his trembling hands, but, at last, when he had succeeded in lighting his candle and came out of his room, he found the door opposite wide open, and the young girl lying on her side and barring the entrance.

'What is the matter?' Lazare cried in amazement. 'Have you fallen?'

It had just flashed through his mind that she was prowling about again, playing the spy. But she made no reply, and never even stirred; in fact, with her closed eyes, she seemed to him to be dead. There could be no doubt that just as she was leaving her room to seek assistance a fainting-fit had thrown her on the ground.

'Pauline, speak to me, I beg you! What is the matter with you?'

He had bent down and was holding the light to her face. She was extremely flushed, and seemed a prey to violent fever. Then all hesitation on his part vanished, and he took her up in his arms and carried her to her bed full of fraternal anxiety. When he had placed her in bed again, he began to question her once more, 'For goodness' sake, do speak to me! Have you hurt yourself?'

She had just opened her eyes, but she could not yet speak, and merely looked at him with a fixed gaze. Then, as he still continued to press her with questions, she carried her hand to her throat.

'It is your throat that hurts you, is it?'

At last, in a strange voice, that seemed to come with immense difficulty, she gasped:

'Don't make me speak, please. It hurts me so.'

As she said this she was seized with another attack of coughing, the same hoarse guttural cough that he had heard from his bedroom. Her face turned bluish, and her distress became so great that her eyes filled with tears. She lifted her hands to her poor trembling brow, which was quivering with the hammer-like throbs of a frightful headache.

'You caught that to-day!' he stammered, quite distracted. 'It was very foolish of you to act as you did, when you were already far from well!' But he checked himself, as he saw her looking up at him with a gaze of entreaty.

'Just open your mouth and let me look at your throat.'

It was all she could do to open her jaws. Lazare brought the candle close to her, and was with difficulty able to espy the back of her throat, which was dry, and gleamed with a bright crimson. It was evidently a case of angina, and her burning fever and terrible headache filled him with alarm as to its precise nature. The poor girl's face wore such an agonised expression of choking that he was seized with a horrible fear of seeing her suffocated before his very eyes. She was not able to swallow; every attempt to do so made her whole body quiver. At last a fresh attack of coughing threw her into another fainting-fit; and thereupon in a state of complete panic he flew off to thump at Véronique's door.

'Véronique! Véronique! Get up! Pauline is dying.'

When Véronique, half-dressed and scared, entered the girl's room, she found Lazare excitedly talking to himself in the middle of it.

'What a forsaken hole to be in! One might die here like a dog! There is no help to be had nearer than a couple of miles!'

He strode up to Véronique.

'Try and get someone to go for the Doctor immediately,' he said.

The servant stepped up to the bed and looked at the sick girl. She was quite alarmed at seeing her so flushed, and in her increasing affection for Pauline, whom she had at first so cordially detested, she felt a painful shock.

'I'll go myself,' she said quietly. 'That will be the quickest way. Madame will be quite able to light a fire downstairs, if you want one.'

Then, scarcely yet fully awake, she put on her heavy boots and wrapped a shawl round her; and, after telling Madame Chanteau what the matter was as she went downstairs, she set off, striding along the muddy road. Two o'clock rang out from the church, and the night was so dark that she stumbled every now and then against heaps of stones.

'What is it, then?' asked Madame Chanteau, as she came upstairs.

Lazare scarcely answered her. He had just been ferreting about in the cupboard for his old medical treatises, and was now bending down before the chest of drawers, turning over the pages of one of his books with trembling fingers, while trying to remember something of what he had formerly learnt. But he grew more and more confused, and perpetually turned to the index without being able to find what he wanted.

'It's only a bad sick headache,' said Madame Chanteau, who had sat down. 'The best thing we can do is to leave her to sleep.'

At this Lazare burst out angrily:

'A sick headache! A sick headache indeed! You will drive me quite mad, mother, by standing there so unconcernedly. Go down stairs and get some water to boil.'

'There is no necessity to disturb Louise, is there?' she asked.

'No, indeed, not the least. I don't require anybody's assistance. If I want anything I will call you.'

When he was alone again, he went and took hold of Pauline's wrist to try her pulse. He counted one hundred and fifteen pulsations; and he felt the girl's burning hand cling closely and lingeringly to his own. Her heavy eyelids remained closed, but she was thanking him and forgiving him with that pressure of her hand. Though she was unable to smile, she still wanted to let him understand that she had heard and was pleased to know that he was there alone with her, without a thought for anybody else. Generally, he had a horror of all suffering, and took himself off at the slightest appearance of indisposition in any of his relatives, for he was a shockingly bad nurse, and was so unable to control his nerves that he ever feared lest he should burst out crying. And so it was a pleasant surprise to Pauline to see him now so anxious and devoted. He himself could not have explained the warmth of feeling that was upbuoying him, or the necessity he felt of relying on himself alone to give her relief. The pressure of her little hand upset him, and he tried to cheer her.

'It's nothing at all, my dear. I am expecting Cazenove directly; but we needn't feel the least alarm.'

She still kept her eyes closed as she murmured, apparently still in pain: 'Oh! I'm not at all frightened. What troubles me most is to see you so much disturbed.'

Then, in a still lower voice, barely a whisper, she added: 'Have you forgiven me yet? I behaved very wickedly this morning.'

He bent down and kissed her brow as though she were his wife. Then he stepped aside, for his tears were blinding him. The idea occurred to him that he might as well prepare a sleeping-draught while waiting for the doctor's arrival. Pauline's little medicine-chest was in a small cupboard in the room. He felt a little afraid lest he should make some mistake, and he looked closely at the different phials; finally he poured a few drops of morphia into a glass of sugared water. When she swallowed a spoonful of it, the pain in her throat became so great that he hesitated about giving her a second. There was nothing else he could do. That spell of inactive waiting was becoming terribly painful to him. When he could no longer endure to stand beside her bed and see her suffering, he turned to his books again, hoping to find therein an account of her malady and its remedy. Could it be a case of diphtheritic angina? He had certainly not seen any malignant growth on the roof of her mouth, but he plunged into the perusal of a description of that complaint and its treatment, losing himself in a maze of long sentences whose meaning he could not gather, and striving to grope through superfluous details, like a child battling with some lesson he cannot understand. By-and-by a sigh brought him hurrying back to the bedside, with his head buzzing with scientific terms, whose uncouth syllables only served to increase his anxiety.

'Well, how is she getting on?' inquired Madame Chanteau, who had come softly upstairs again.

'Oh! she keeps just the same,' Lazare replied.

Then, in a burst of impatience, he added:

'It is terrible, this delay on the Doctor's part! The girl might die twenty times over!'

The doors had been left open, and Matthew, who slept under the table in the kitchen, had also just come up the stairs, for it was his habit to follow people into every room of the house. His big paws pattered over the floor like old woollen slippers. He seemed quite gay at all this commotion in the middle of the night, and wanted to jump up to Pauline, and even tried to wheel round after his tail, like an animal unconscious of his master's trouble. But Lazare, irritated by his inopportune gaiety, gave him a kick.

'Be off with you, or I'll choke you! Can't you understand, you idiot?'

The dog, afraid of a beating, and, it may be, suddenly grasping the situation, went to lie down under the bed. But Lazare's rough behaviour had aroused Madame Chanteau's indignation. Without waiting any longer she went down to the kitchen again, saying drily: 'The water will be ready whenever you want it.'

As she descended the stairs Lazare heard her muttering that it was abominable to kick an animal like that, and that he would probably have kicked her also if she had remained in the room. Every moment he went to the bedside to glance at Pauline. She now seemed to be quite overcome with fever, utterly prostrate; the only sign of life that came from her was the wheezing of her breath amidst the mournful silence of the room, a wheezing that began to sound like a death-rattle. Then wild unreasoning fear again seized upon Lazare. He felt quite certain that the girl would soon choke if help did not arrive. He fidgeted about the room on tip-toes, glancing perpetually at the timepiece. It was not three o'clock, and Véronique could hardly have got to the Doctor's yet. He followed her in imagination through the black night all along the road to Arromanches. By this time she would be passing the oak-wood; then she would cross the little bridge, and then she would save five minutes by running down the hill. At last a longing for tidings of some sort led him to throw open the window, though it was quite impossible for him to distinguish anything amidst the profound darkness. Down in the depths of Bonneville only a single light was gleaming, the lantern, probably, of some fisherman preparing to put out to sea. Everything was wrapped in mournful sadness, far-reaching abandonment, in which all life appeared to die away. He closed the window and then opened it again, only to close it quickly once more. He began to lose all idea of the flight of time, and was startled when he heard three o'clock strike. By this time the Doctor must have got his horse harnessed, and his gig would be spinning along the road, transpiercing the darkness with the yellow glare of its lamp. Lazare grew so distracted with impatience as he watched the sick girl's increasing suffocation that he started up as from a dream, when, at about four o'clock, he finally heard some rapid footsteps on the stairs.

'Ah! here you are at last!' he cried.

Doctor Cazenove at once ordered a second candle to be lighted, in order that he might examine Pauline properly. Lazare held one of the candles, while Véronique, whose hair the wind had thrown into wild disorder, and who was splashed with mud to the waist, stood at the head of the bed with the other. Madame Chanteau looked on. The sick girl was in a state of semi-somnolence, and could not open her mouth without a groan of pain. When the Doctor had laid her back in bed again, he, who upon his first entrance had shown signs of great uneasiness, stepped into the middle of the room with an expression of relief.

'That Véronique of yours put me into a pretty fright,' said he. 'She told me such a lot of terrible things that I thought the girl must have got poisoned, and you see that I have come with my pockets crammed full of drugs.'

'It is angina, is it not?' Lazare asked.

'Yes, simple angina. There is no occasion for alarm at present.'

Madame Chanteau indulged in a little gesture of triumph, as much as to say that she had known that from the first.

'"No occasion for alarm at present"!' repeated Lazare, his fears rising again. 'Are you afraid of complications?'

'No,' answered the Doctor, after some slight hesitation; 'but with these tiresome throat complaints one can never feel quite sure of anything.'

He added that nothing more could be done just then, and that he would prefer waiting till the morrow to bleed the patient. But as the young man pressed him to attempt at any rate some alleviating measures, he expressed his readiness to apply some sinapisms. Véronique brought up a bowl of warm water, and the Doctor himself placed the damped mustard-leaves in position, slipping them along the girl's legs from her ankles to her knees. But they only increased her discomfort, for the fever continued unabated and her head was still throbbing frightfully. Emollient gargles were also suggested, and Madame Chanteau prepared a decoction of nettle-leaves, which had to be laid aside, however, after a first attempt to administer it, for pain rendered Pauline unable to swallow. It was nearly six o'clock, and dawn was breaking when the Doctor went away.

'I will come back about noon,' he said to Lazare on the landing. 'Be quite easy. She is all right, except for the pain.'

'And is the pain nothing?' cried the young man. 'One never ought to suffer like that!'

Cazenove glanced at him, and then raised his hands to heaven at such an extraordinary pretension.

When Lazare returned to Pauline's room, he sent his mother and Véronique to get a little sleep. He himself could not have slept if he had tried. He watched the day breaking in that disorderly room: the mournful dawn it was that follows a night of agony. With his brow pressed to the window-pane, he was looking out hopelessly at the gloomy sky, when a sudden noise made him turn. He thought it was Pauline getting up in bed, but it was Matthew, who had been forgotten by everybody, and who had at last crept from under the bed to go to the girl, whose hand hung down over the counterpane. And the dog began licking that hand with such affectionate gentleness that Lazare, quite touched at the sight, put his arm round his neck, and said:

'Ah! my poor fellow, your mistress is ill, you see; but she'll soon be all right, and then we'll all three go on our rambles once more.'

Pauline had opened her eyes, and, though it pained her, she smiled.

A period of suffering and sadness followed. Lazare, acting upon an impulse of wild affection, almost refused to let the others enter the sick-room. He would barely allow his mother and Louise there in the morning to inquire after Pauline; Véronique, in whom he now recognised a genuine affection for his cousin, was the only one whose presence he tolerated. At the outset of Pauline's illness Madame Chanteau tried to make him understand the impropriety of a young man thus nursing a girl; but he retorted by asking if he were not her husband, and by saying that doctors attended women equally with men. Between the young people themselves there was never the slightest embarrassment. Suffering and, it might be, the approach of death obliterated all other considerations. The world ceased to have any existence for them. The chief matters of interest were that the draughts should be taken at the proper times, and such little details, whilst they waited hour by hour for the illness to take a more favourable turn. Thus minor matters of mere physical life suddenly assumed enormous importance, as on them depended joy or sorrow. The nights followed the days, and Lazare's existence seemed to hang in the balance over a deep abyss into whose black darkness he ever feared to fall.