THE JOY OF LIFE (continued 4)

Doctor Cazenove came to see Pauline each morning, and sometimes called again in the evening after dinner. Upon his second visit he had determined to bleed her freely. The fever, however, though checked for a time, reappeared. Two days passed, and the Doctor was evidently disturbed in his mind, unable to understand the tenacity with which the fever clung to his patient. As the girl felt ever-increasing pain in opening her mouth, he could not make any proper examination of the back of her throat, which seemed to him to be much swollen and of a livid hue. At last, as Pauline complained of increasing tightness, which made her throat feel as though it would burst, the Doctor one morning remarked to Lazare:

'I am beginning to suspect the presence of a phlegmon.'

The young man then drew him into his own room. The previous evening, while turning over the pages of an old Manual of Pathology, he had read the chapter on retro-pharyngeal abscesses which project into the œsophagus, and are apt to cause death by suffocation from compressing the windpipe.

He turned very pale as he asked:

'Then she is going to die?'

'I trust not,' the Doctor answered. 'We must wait and see what happens.'

But Cazenove himself could not conceal his uneasiness. He confessed that he was almost powerless in the present circumstances of the case. How could they search for an abscess at the back of a contracted mouth? And, besides, to open the abscess too soon would be attended with grave danger. The best thing they could do was to leave the matter in the hands of Nature, though the illness would probably prove very protracted and painful.

'Well, I am not the Divinity,' he exclaimed, when Lazare reproached him with the uselessness of his science.

The affection which Doctor Cazenove felt for Pauline showed itself in an increased assumption of brusque carelessness. That tall old man, who seemed as dry as a branch of brier, was really much affected. For more than thirty years he had knocked about the world, changing from vessel to vessel, and working in hospitals all over the colonies. He had treated epidemics on board ship, frightful diseases in tropical climes, elephantiasis at Cayenne, serpent bites in India; and he had killed men of every colour; had studied the effects of poison on Chinese, and risked the lives of Negroes in delicate experiments in vivisection. But now this girl, with a soreness in her throat, so wrought upon his feelings that he could not sleep. His iron hands trembled, and his callousness to death failed him, fearful as he was of a fatal issue. And so, wishing to conceal an emotion which he considered unworthy of him, he made a pretence of contempt for suffering. 'People were born to suffer,' said he, 'so why make a fuss about it?'

Every morning Lazare said to him:

'Do try something else, Doctor, I beg you. It is terrible. She cannot get a moment's rest. She has been crying out all the night.'

'Well, but, dash it all, it isn't my fault!' the Doctor replied, working himself up to a high pitch of indignation. 'I can't cut off her neck to cure her.'

Thereupon the young man grew vexed in his turn, and exclaimed:

'So medicine is worth nothing?'

'Nothing at all when the human machine is out of order. Quinine arrests fever, and purgatives act on the bowels, and bleeding is useful in apoplexy, but it's a happy-go-lucky business with almost everything else. We must leave the case to Nature.'

These remarks were wrung from him by his anger at being unable to discover what course of treatment to adopt. It was not his ordinary custom to deny the power of medicine so roundly, for he had practised it too much to be sceptical or modest as to its merits. For whole hours he would sit by the girl's bedside, watching her and studying her, and then he would go off without even leaving a single instruction behind him, for indeed he knew not what to do, and was compelled to leave the abscess developing, though he recognised that a hair's breadth more or less in its size might make all the difference between life and death.

For a whole week Lazare gave himself up to the most terrible alarm. He, too, was in perpetual fear of seeing Nature's work suddenly cease. At every painful, difficult gasp that the girl gave he thought that all was over. He formed in his mind a vivid picture of the phlegmon, he fancied he could see it blocking Pauline's windpipe; if it were only to swell a little more her breath would no longer be able to pass. His two years of imperfect medical study served to increase his alarm. His fears made him lose his head, and he broke out into nervous mutiny, excited protest against life. Why was such frightful suffering permitted? Was not all such bodily torture, all such writhing and burning pain cruelly purposeless when disease fell on a poor weak girl? He was for ever at her bedside, questioning her, even at the risk of fatiguing her. Was she still in pain? How was she feeling now?

Sometimes he would take her hand and lay it upon his neck. It felt like an intolerable weight there, like a ball of molten lead, which throbbed till he almost choked. Her headache never left her. She did not know where or how to rest her head, and she was tortured by sleeplessness. During the ten days that the fever racked her she scarcely slept for a couple of hours. One evening, to make things still worse, she experienced a frightful pain in her ears, and fainted from sheer suffering. But she did not confess to Lazare all the agony she endured. She showed great courage and fortitude, recognising that he was almost as ill as she herself was, his own blood hot with fever, and his throat choked as by an abscess. She frequently even told fibs, and forced a smile to her lips when racked by the keenest suffering. She felt easier, she would say, and she would beg him to go and take a little rest. One of the most painful features of her illness was that she could not even swallow her saliva without giving a cry, at which Lazare would start up in alarm, and begin to question her afresh. What was the matter, and where did she feel pain? Then, with her eyes closed, and her face distorted by agony, she would try to deceive him and whisper that it was a mere nothing, that something had tickled her, and that was all.

'Go to sleep and don't be uneasy. I am going to sleep myself now.'

Every evening she went through this pretence of going to sleep, in order to induce him to lie down, but he persisted in watching over her from his arm-chair. The nights were so full of anguish that they never saw the evening fall without a sort of superstitious terror. Would they ever see the sun again?

One night Lazare was leaning against the bed, holding Pauline's hand in his own, as he often did, to let her know that he was there and was not deserting her. Doctor Cazenove had gone off at ten o'clock, angrily exclaiming that he could answer for nothing more. The young man derived some consolation from the thought that Pauline herself was not aware that she was in any imminent danger. In her hearing, only a mere inflammation of the throat was spoken of, which, though very painful, would pass away as easily as a cold in the head. The girl seemed quite tranquil as to the outcome, and bravely retained a cheerful countenance in spite of her sufferings. She smiled as she heard them forming plans for the time when she would be well again. That very night she had once more listened to Lazare arranging a stroll along the shore for the first day that she might be able to go out. Then they grew silent, and she seemed to sleep, but after an interval of a quarter of an hour or so she said distinctly:

'You will have to marry some other girl, I think, my dear.'

He stared at her in amazement, feeling chilled to his bones.

'Why do you say that?' he asked.

She had opened her eyes, and was looking at him with an expression of brave resignation.

'Ah! I know what is the matter with me, and I am glad that I do, for I shall be able to kiss you all before I go.'

Then Lazare grew quite angry. It was insane to think such things. Before a week was over she would be walking about. But he dropped her hand and made an excuse for hurrying to his own room, for sobs were choking him; and he threw himself down in the darkness upon his bed, on which he had not slept for a long time now. A frightful conviction suddenly wrung his heart. Pauline was going to die, perhaps that very night. And the thought that she knew it, and that her silence on the subject hitherto had been due to courageous consideration for the feelings of others, even in the imminent presence of death, completed his despair. She knew the truth; she would see her death agony approach, and he would be there powerless! Already he saw them saying their last good-bye. The whole mournful scene unfolded itself before his eyes with heart-rending detail in the darkness of his room. It was the end of everything, and he grasped his pillow in his arms convulsively, and buried his head in it to drown the sound of his sobs.

The night, however, passed away without any misfortune. Then two days went by without any noticeable change in the patient's condition. Between her and Lazare a new bond had sprung up; the thought of death was with them. Pauline made no further allusion to her critical condition; she even forced herself to look cheerful; and Lazare, too, succeeded in feigning perfect tranquillity, complete confidence in seeing her leave her bed in a few days' time; yet both knew that they were ever bidding each other good-bye in the long, loving glances which their eyes exchanged. At night-time especially, as Lazare sat watching by the girl's bedside, they recognised that each other's thoughts were of that threatened eternal separation which kept them so reflective and silent. Never before had they experienced such melting sadness or felt such a complete blending of their beings.

One morning, as the sun was rising, Lazare felt quite astonished at the calmness with which he was able to contemplate the idea of death. He ransacked his memory, and he could only recall one occasion since the commencement of Pauline's illness when he had felt a cold shudder at the thought of ceasing to be. He had trembled, indeed, at the idea of losing his companion; but that was another kind of fear, into which no thought of the destruction of his own personality entered. His heart bled within him, indeed, but it seemed as though this combat which he was waging with death put him upon an equality with the foe, and gave him courage to look it calmly in the face. Perhaps, too, his fatigue and anxiety filled him with a drowsiness and weariness which numbed his personal fears. He closed his eyes so that he might not see the rising sun, and tried to recall all his old thrills of horror, by telling himself that he, too, would have to die some day. But no reply came; all that seemed to have become quite indifferent to him and to have ceased to have any power to affect him. Even his pessimism seemed to disappear in the presence of that sick-bed; and, far from plunging him into hatred and contempt of the world, his mutinous outburst against suffering was but a passionate longing for robust health, a wild love of life. He no longer talked of blowing the earth into bits, as a worn-out and uninhabitable planet. The one image which ever haunted his mind was Pauline, hearty once more and walking with him arm in arm beneath the bright sunshine; the only craving he felt was to lead her, gay and firm of step, along the paths through which they had once rambled together.

Yet it was that same day that Lazare felt sure of death's approach. At eight o'clock in the morning Pauline was seized with attacks of nausea, and each brought on dangerous symptoms of suffocation. Soon trembling fits supervened, and the poor girl shook so terribly that her teeth could be heard chattering. Lazare, in a state of frightful alarm, shouted from the window that a lad should be sent to Arromanches at once, although the doctor was expected, as usual, at eleven o'clock. The house had fallen into mournful silence, and there had been a sad void since Pauline's gay activity had no longer animated it. Chanteau spent his days downstairs in moody silence, with his eyes fixed on his legs, fearing lest he should be seized with another attack of gout while there was no one to nurse him. Madame Chanteau usually forced Louise to go out, and the pair of them, spending most of their time in the open air, had by this time become very intimate and familiar. Only Véronique's heavy step came and went everlastingly up and down the stairs, breaking the silence of the landings and empty rooms. Lazare had gone three times to lean over the banisters in his impatience to learn whether the servant had been able to get anybody to take a message to the doctor. He had just returned to Pauline's room and was looking at the girl, who appeared to be a little easier, when the door, which he had left ajar, creaked slightly.

'Well, Véronique?' he said.

But it was not Véronique; it was his mother. She had that day intended to take Louise to see some of her friends in the neighbourhood of Verchemont.

'Little Cuche has just gone,' she said. 'He can run fast.'

Then, after a short interval of silence, she asked: 'Is she no better?'

Lazare made no answer, but with a hopeless gesture pointed to Pauline, who was lying motionless, as though she were quite dead, with her pale face bathed in cold perspiration.

'Ah! we won't go to Verchemont, then,' his mother continued. 'It seems very tenacious, this mysterious illness which no one seems to understand. The poor girl has been sorely tried.'

She sat down and went on chattering in the same subdued monotonous voice.

'We had meant to start at seven o'clock, but it happened that Louise overslept herself. Everything seems to be falling on one this morning; it almost looks as though it were done on purpose. The grocer from Arromanches has just called with his bill, and I have been obliged to pay him, and now the baker is downstairs. We spent forty francs on bread again last month. I can't imagine where it all goes to!'

Lazare was not paying the least attention to what she said; he was too much absorbed in his fears of a return of the shivering-fits. But that monotonous flood of talk irritated him, and he tried to get his mother to leave the room.

'Will you give Véronique a couple of towels and tell her to bring them up to me?' he said.

'Of course I shall have to pay the baker,' his mother resumed, as though she had not heard him. 'He has spoken to me, and so Véronique can't tell him that I have gone out. Upon my word, I've had quite enough of this house. It is becoming quite a burden. If Pauline were not unfortunately so ill, she would advance me the ninety francs for her board. It is the 20th to-day, so that there are only ten days to wait before it will be due. The poor child seems so very weak——'

Lazare suddenly turned towards her.

'Well, what is it you want?' he asked.

'You don't happen to know where she keeps her money, do you?'

'No!'

'I dare say it's in her chest of drawers. You might just look.'

He refused with an angry gesture, and his hands quivered.

'I beseech you, mother, for pity's sake, do go away.'

These last remarks had been hurriedly exchanged at the far end of the room. There was a moment's painful silence, which was broken by a clear voice speaking from the bed:

'Lazare, just come and take the key from under my pillow, and give my aunt what she wants.'

They were both quite startled. Lazare began to protest, for he was very unwilling to open the drawer; but he was obliged to give way in order that he might not distress Pauline. When he had given his mother a hundred-franc note, and had slipped the key under Pauline's pillow again, he saw that the girl was taken with another trembling-fit, which shook her like a young aspen, and seemed likely to rend her in twain. Two big tears trickled from her closed eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

Doctor Cazenove did not arrive before his usual time. He had seen nothing of little Cuche, who was probably larking about amongst the hedges. As soon as he heard what Lazare had to say and cast a hasty glance at Pauline, he cried out: 'She is saved!'

That sickness and those alarming fits of trembling were simply indications that the abscess had at last broken. There was no more occasion to fear suffocation; the complaint would now gradually go off of itself. Their joy was great; Lazare accompanied the Doctor out of the room; and as Martin, the old sailor who had taken service with the Doctor, drank a bumper of wine in the kitchen, everyone wanted to clink glasses with him. Madame Chanteau and Louise drank some walnut liqueur.

'I never felt really alarmed,' said the former. 'I was sure there could be nothing serious the matter with her.'

'That didn't prevent the poor dear from having an awful time of it!' exclaimed Véronique. 'I'm more pleased than if some one had given me a hundred sous.'

Just at that moment Abbé Horteur came in. He had called to make inquiries, and he drank a glass of wine by way of doing like the rest. Every day he had come in this way like a kindly neighbour; for, on his first visit, Lazare had told him that he could not see the patient for fear of alarming her, whereupon the priest had quietly replied that he understood it, and had contented himself with mentioning the poor girl's name when saying his masses. Chanteau, as he clinked glasses with him, complimented him upon his spirit of tolerance.

'Well, you see, she is coming round nicely, without the help of an Oremus!'

'Everyone is saved after his own fashion,' the priest declared sententiously, as he drained his glass.

When the Doctor had left, Louise wanted to go upstairs to kiss Pauline. The poor girl was still suffering much pain, but this was not now regarded as of much account. Lazare gaily bade her take courage, and, quite dropping all pretence, began even to exaggerate the danger through which she had passed, telling her that three times already he had believed that she was lying dead in his arms. Pauline, however, manifested no exuberant delight at being saved; but she was conscious of the joy of life, after having found the courage to look calmly upon death's approach. An expression of loving emotion passed over her worn, sad face as she pressed her cousin's hand and murmured to him, smiling:

'Ah! my dear, you can't escape after all, you see. I shall be your wife yet.'

Her convalescence was heralded in by long slumbers. She slept for whole days, quite calmly, breathing easily and regularly, steeped in a strength-restoring torpor. Minouche, who had been banished from the room during her period of prostration, took advantage of this quietness to slip in again. She jumped lightly upon the bed, and immediately lay down there, nestling beside her mistress. Indeed, she spent whole days on it, revelling in the warmth of the blankets, or making an interminable toilet, wearing away her fur by constant licking, but performing each operation with such supple lightness that Pauline could not even tell she was moving. At the same time Matthew, who, equally with Minouche, was now granted free access to the room, snored like a human being on the carpet by the side of the bed.

One of Pauline's first fancies was to have her young friends from the village brought up to her room on the following Saturday. They had just begun to allow her to eat boiled eggs after the very spare diet to which she had been subjected for three weeks. Though she was still very weak, she was able to sit up to receive the children. Lazare had to go to the drawer again to find her some five-franc pieces. After she had questioned her pensioners and had insisted on paying off what she called her arrears, she became so thoroughly exhausted that she lay back in a fainting condition. But she manifested great interest in the piles, groynes, and stockades, and every day inquired if they still remained firmly in position. Some of the timbers had already weakened, and her cousin told a falsehood when he asserted that only the nailing of a plank or two had ceased to hold. One morning, when she was alone, she slipped out of bed, wishing to see the high tide dash against the stockades in the distance; and this time again her budding strength failed her, and she would have fallen to the ground if Véronique had not come into the room in time to catch her in her arms.

'Ah! you naughty girl! I shall have to fasten you down in bed if you don't behave more sensibly!' said Lazare with a smile.

He still persisted in watching over her, but he was completely worn out with fatigue, and would drop asleep in his arm-chair. At first he had felt a lively joy in seeing her drink her broth. The young girl's restored health became a source of exquisite pleasure to him; it was a renewal of life of which he himself partook. But afterwards, when he had grown accustomed to it, and all the girl's suffering had passed away, he ceased to rejoice as over some unhoped-for blessing. All that was left to him was a sort of hebetation, a slackening of the nerves now that the struggle was over, a confused notion that the hollowness and mockery of everything was becoming manifest again.

One night when he had been sleeping soundly Pauline heard him awake with a sigh of agony. By the feeble glimmer of the night-light she caught a glimpse of his terror-stricken face, his eyes staring wildly with horror, and his hands clasped together in an attitude of entreaty. He stammered out some incoherent words: 'O God! O God!'

She leant towards him with hasty anxiety, and called: 'What is the matter with you, Lazare? Are you in pain?'

The sound of her voice made him start. He had been seen, then. He sat silent and vexed, and could only contrive to tell a clumsy fib.

'There's nothing the matter with me. It was you yourself who were crying out just now.'

But in reality the horror of death had just come back to him in his sleep—a horror without cause, born of blank nothingness—a horror whose icy breath had awakened him with a great shudder. O God! he thought, so he would have to die some day. And that thought took possession of him, and choked him; while Pauline, who had laid her head back again on her pillow, watched him with an air of motherly compassion.

V

Every evening, in the dining-room, when Véronique had cleared the table, Madame Chanteau and Louise chatted together; while Chanteau, buried in his newspaper, gave brief replies to his wife's few questions. During the fortnight when he had thought Pauline in danger, Lazare had never joined the family at dinner; but he now dined downstairs again, though, directly the meal was over, he returned to his post at the invalid's bedside. He scarcely closed the door behind him before Madame Chanteau began with her old complaints.

At first she affected loving anxiety.

'Poor boy!' she said, 'he is quite wearing himself out. It is really foolish of him to go on endangering his health in this way. He has scarcely had any sleep for the last three weeks. He is paler than ever to-day.'

Then she would have a word or two of pity for Pauline. The poor dear seemed to suffer so much that it was impossible to stay in her room without a heartache. But she soon began to harp upon the manner in which that illness upset the house. Everything remained in a state of confusion; their meals were always cold, and there was no relying upon anything. Then she broke off suddenly, and, turning to her husband, asked him:

'Has Véronique found time to give you your marshmallow water?'

'Yes, yes,' he replied from behind his newspaper. Then she lowered her voice and addressed herself to Louise.

'It is very peculiar, but that poor Pauline seems to have brought us nothing but misfortune. And yet some people persist in looking upon her as our good angel! I know the stories that are floating about. At Caen, they say—don't they, Louise?—that we have grown quite rich through her. Rich, indeed! I should just think so! You may speak to me quite frankly, for I am above taking any notice of their slanderous gossip.'

'Well, indeed, they do talk about you, just as they talk about everybody else,' the girl murmured. 'Only last month I was obliged to snub a notary's wife, who dared to speak on the subject, without knowing anything at all about it. You can't prevent people talking, you know.'

After that, Madame Chanteau made no attempt to veil her real feelings. There was no doubt, she said, that they were suffering from their own generosity. Had they wanted anyone's assistance before Pauline came? And where would she have been now, in what Paris slum, if they had not consented to take her into their house? It was all very fine for people to talk about her money, but that money had never been anything but a source of trouble to them; indeed, it seemed to have brought ruin with it. The facts spoke clearly enough for themselves. Her son would never have launched out into those idiotic speculations in seaweed, nor have wasted his time in trying to prevent the sea from sweeping Bonneville away, if that unlucky Pauline had not turned his head. If she had lost her money, well, it was her own fault. The poor young fellow had wrecked both his health and his future. Madame Chanteau could hardly find words strong enough with which to inveigh against those hundred and fifty thousand francs of which her secrétaire still reeked. It was, indeed, all the large sums which had been swallowed up, and the small amounts which were still being daily abstracted and thus increasing the deficit, that embittered her, as though therein lay the ferment in which her honesty had rotted away. By this time putrefaction was complete, and she hated Pauline for all the money she owed her.

'What is the good of talking to such an obstinate creature?' she resumed bitterly. 'She is horribly miserly at heart, and, at the same time, she is recklessness itself. She will toss twelve thousand francs to the bottom of the sea for the Bonneville fishermen, who only laugh at us, and feed all the filthy brats in the neighbourhood; while I perfectly tremble, upon my word of honour I do, if I have to ask her for only forty sous. What do you think of that? With all her pretence of charity to others, she has got a heart of stone.'

During all the talk of this kind Véronique was often in and out of the room, clearing away the dinner things or bringing in the tea, and she loitered to listen to what was being said, and sometimes even ventured on a remark.

'Mademoiselle Pauline got a heart of stone! Oh, Madame! how can you say so?'

Madame Chanteau reduced her to silence by a stern look. Then, resting her elbows on the table, she entered into a series of complicated calculations, talking as to herself.

'I've nothing more to do with her money now, thank goodness, but I should like to know how much of it there's left. Not more than seventy thousand francs, I'll be bound. Just let us reckon it up a little. Three thousand have gone already in that experimental stockade; then there are, at least, two hundred francs going every month in charity, and ninety francs for her board here. All that mounts up quickly. Will you take a bet, Louise, that she'll ruin herself? You will see her reduced to a pallet one of these days. And when she has quite ruined herself, who will take her in?—how will she manage to live?'

At this Véronique could not restrain herself, but broke out: 'I'm sure Madame could never think of turning her out of doors?'

'What do you mean? What are you speaking about?' her mistress demanded angrily. 'There's no question of anyone being turned out of doors. I never turned anybody out of doors. What I said was that nothing can be more foolish, when one has had a fortune of one's own, to go frittering it all away and becoming dependent upon other people. Go off to your kitchen.'

The servant went off, grinding out muttered protests from between her teeth. Then there came an interval of silence, while Louise poured out the tea. The only sound in the room was the slight rustling of the newspaper, which Chanteau read from end to end, not missing even the advertisements. Now and then he spoke a word or two to the young girl.

'You might give me another piece of sugar, please. Have you had a letter from your father yet?'

'No, indeed,' she answered with a smile. 'But if I am in the way I can leave at any time, you know. You have quite sufficient trouble with Pauline's illness. I would rather have gone away before, but you insisted upon my staying.'

'You mustn't talk like that,' he interrupted. 'It is only too kind of you to give us the pleasure of your society till poor Pauline can get downstairs again.'

'I can go to Arromanches till my father comes, if I am in the way,' she continued, as though she had not heard him, merely by way of teasing. 'My aunt Léonie has taken a chalet there, and there are plenty of people there, and a good beach where one can bathe at any rate. But she is very wearisome is my aunt Léonie.'

Chanteau laughed at the girl's playful, fondling ways. Though he dare not confess it to his wife, he was entirely on the side of Pauline, who nursed him so kindly and carefully. He buried himself in his newspaper again; while Madame Chanteau, who had been immersed in deep reflections, suddenly started up, as though awaking from a dream.

'There's one thing which I can't forgive her. She has completely taken possession of my son. He scarcely stops at the table for a quarter of an hour, and I can hardly get a single word with him.'

'That will soon be over,' said Louise. 'She must have someone with her.'

Madame Chanteau shook her head and tightened her lips, but the words which she seemed trying to keep back broke out, apparently in spite of herself.

'It's all very well to say that, but it's a little peculiar for a young man to be always shut up with a sick girl. There! I've said what I mean and haven't kept it back, and if it doesn't please others I can't help it.'

Then, noticing Louise's embarrassed look, she added: 'It isn't healthy to breathe the atmosphere of a sick-room. She may easily infect him with her sore throat. Those girls who seem so vigorous have sometimes all sorts of impurities in their blood. Well, I don't know why I shouldn't say it, but I don't think she is quite sound and healthy.'

Louise then feebly defended her friend. She had always found her so nice and kind; that was the only argument which she contrived to bring forward—in reply to the accusation of a stony heart and ill-health. An instinctive desire for tranquil peace and quietness induced her to try to mitigate Madame Chanteau's rough ill-feeling, although every day she listened to her trying to excel her bitterness of the day before. While making some kind of protest against the harshness of Madame Chanteau's language, Louise indeed flushed with secret pleasure at finding herself preferred to Pauline, promoted to the position of favourite. She was like Minouche in this respect, content to be caressing so long as her own enjoyment was not interfered with.

Every evening the conversation, after flowing along the same channels, ended invariably in the same way, Madame Chanteau slowly saying:

'No, Louisette, the girl that my son ought to marry——'

And from that starting-point she would launch out into a disquisition upon the qualities of an ideal daughter-in-law, while her eyes all the time remained fixed upon Louise, trying to make her understand more than she was willing to actually say. It was the girl's own self that was gradually being described. A young person who had been well brought up and educated, who had acquired a knowledge of society, and who was fit to play the part of a hostess, who was graceful rather than beautiful, and, what was especially desirable, who was truly feminine and lady-like; for a boy-like girl, a hoyden who made frankness a pretence for being rough and rude, was, said she, her detestation. Then there was the question of money—which was really the only one that influenced her—and this she made a pretence of dismissing with a word, saying that, though she made no account of a dowry, her son had great schemes and aims for the future, and could not, of course, afford to contract a marriage that would be likely to lead to ruin.

'I may tell you, my dear, that if Pauline had come here penniless, with nothing but the chemise she wore, the marriage would probably have taken place years ago. But you can't be surprised at my hesitation and distrust, when I see money slipping through her hands like water. The sixty thousand francs she still has left won't trouble her much longer, I fancy. No! Lazare deserves a better fate than that, and I will never consent to his marrying a mad creature who would stint the house in food so that she might ruin herself with idiotic follies.'

'Ah, no! money's nothing,' said Louise, lowering her eyes; 'still one needs some.'

Although Louise's dowry was not directly referred to, her two hundred thousand francs seemed to be lying there upon the table, glistening beneath the glow of the hanging lamp. It was because Madame Chanteau felt and saw them there that she became thus excited, and swept aside Pauline's paltry sixty thousand in her dream of winning for her son that other girl whose big fortune was still intact. She had noticed how Lazare had been drawn towards Louise before all this tiresome business, which now kept him in seclusion upstairs. If the girl was equally attracted towards him, why shouldn't they make a match of it? Her husband would give his consent, and that the more readily when he saw it was a case of mutual affection. Thus she did all she could to fan Louise's love into life, spending the rest of the evening in making such remarks as she thought likely to excite the girl's passion.

'My Lazare is so good! No one knows half how good he is. You yourself, Louisette, have no notion how affectionate is his nature. Nobody will pity the girl who gets him for a husband. She will be quite certain of being passionately loved. And he is such a handsome vigorous fellow, too! His skin is as white as a chicken's. My grandfather, the Chevalier de la Vignière, had such a white skin that he used to wear his clothes cut quite low like a woman's when he went to masked balls.'

Louise blushed and smiled, and was much amused with Madame Chanteau's details. The mother's advocacy of her son, and the confidences which she poured out to Louise with the object of inclining her to a union with Lazare, might have kept her there all night if Chanteau had not begun to feel very drowsy over his newspaper.

'Isn't it about time for us all to go to bed?' he asked with a yawn.

Then, as though he had been quite unconscious for some time of what had been going on, and was taking up the thread of Madame Chanteau's earlier conversation, he added:

'You are quite mistaken. She is a good girl, and I shall be very glad when she is able to come downstairs again and eat her soup beside me.'

'We shall all be glad,' cried his wife, with considerable bitterness. 'We may speak and say what we think, without ceasing to be fond of those of whom we talk.'

'The poor little dear!' exclaimed Louise, in her turn; 'I should be very glad to bear half the pain for her, if such a thing were possible. She is so amiable!'

Véronique, who was just bringing them their candles, once more put in her word.

'You are quite right to be her friend, Mademoiselle Louise, for no one, unless she had a paving-stone for a heart, could ever wish her unkindly.'

'That will do,' said Madame Chanteau. 'We didn't ask for your opinion. It would be very much better if you cleaned the candlesticks. This one here is quite filthy.'

They all rose from their seats. Chanteau lost no time in escaping from his wife's snappishness, and shut himself up in his room on the ground floor. But when the two women reached the landing upstairs, where their rooms adjoined each other, they did not at once go to bed. Madame Chanteau almost always took Louise into her own room for a little time and there resumed her remarks about Lazare, showing the girl one and another portrait of him, and even exhibiting little memorials and souvenirs, such as a tooth which had been extracted when he was quite young, or a look of the pale hair of his infancy, or even some of his old clothes; for instance, the bow he had worn at his first communion, or his first pair of trousers.

'See!' she said, one night, 'these are some locks of his hair. I have a number, cut at all stages of his life.'

Thus, when Louise got to bed she could not sleep for thinking of the young man whom his mother was trying to force on her.

Up above, Pauline's convalescence was progressing gradually. Although the patient was now out of danger, she still remained very feeble, worn out and exhausted by feverish attacks which astonished the doctor. As Lazare said, doctors were always being astonished. He himself was growing more irritable every hour. The sudden lassitude which had fallen upon him when the crisis was over seemed to be turning into a kind of uneasy restlessness. Now that he was no longer wrestling against death, he began to feel distressed by the close atmosphere of the apartment and the spoonfuls of physic which had to be administered at regular hours, and all the other little duties of a sick-room, which he had so enthusiastically taken upon himself at first. Pauline was able to do without him now, and he sank back into the boredom of an aimless empty existence—a boredom which kept him fidgeting from chair to chair, with his hands hanging listlessly by his side, or wandering about the room, staring hopelessly at the walls, or deep in gloomy abstraction in front of the window, looking out, but seeing nothing.

'Lazare,' Pauline said to him one day, 'you must go out. Véronique will be quite able to do everything.'

But he hotly refused. 'Couldn't she bear his presence any longer,' he asked, 'that she wanted to send him away? It would be very nice of him, wouldn't it, if he were to desert her like that before she was quite strong again?'

But he grew calm as she gently explained to him:

'You wouldn't be deserting me by just going out to get a little fresh air. Go out in the afternoon. We should be in a pretty way if you were to fall ill too.'

Then, however, she unfortunately added:

'I have seen you yawning all the morning.'

'You've seen me yawning!' he cried. 'Say at once that I have no heart! This is a nice way to thank me!'

The next morning Pauline was more diplomatic. She pretended that she was very anxious that the construction of the stockades should be proceeded with; the high winter tides were coming on, and the experimental works would be swept away if the system of defence was not completed. But Lazare no longer glowed with his early enthusiasm; he was dissatisfied with the resistance of the timbers as he had arranged them, and fresh study would be necessary. Then, too, the estimate would be exceeded, and the authorities had not yet voted a single sou. For two days Pauline tried to fan his inventive amour-propre into fresh life. She asked him if he was going to let himself be beaten by the sea, with all the neighbourhood looking on and smiling; as for the money, it would certainly be paid back, if she advanced it, as they had settled she should. By degrees Lazare then seemed to work himself up to his old pitch of enthusiasm. He made fresh designs and again called in the carpenter from Arromanches, and had long consultations with him in his own room, the door of which he left open so that he might be ready to go to Pauline at the first summons.

'Now,' said he one morning as he kissed the girl, 'the sea won't be able to break anything. I am quite sure we shall be successful. As soon as you are able to walk, you must go and see how the works are getting on.'

Louise had just come up into the room to inquire after Pauline's health, and as she, too, kissed her, the patient whispered to her:

'Take him away with you.'

Lazare at first refused to go. He was expecting the doctor, he said. But Louise laughed and told him that she was sure he was much too gallant to let her go alone to the Gonins, where she was going to choose some lobsters to send to Caen. Besides, he could give a look at the works on the way.

'Yes, do go,' said Pauline. 'It will please me if you do. Take his arm, Louise. There, now, don't let him get away again.'

She grew quite merry as the two others jokingly pushed each other about; but when they had left the room she became very thoughtful, and leaned over the edge of her bed to listen to their laughter and footsteps dying away down the stairs.

A quarter of an hour later Véronique came in with the doctor. By-and-by she installed herself at Pauline's bedside, but without abandoning her saucepans, for she kept perpetually running to and fro between the kitchen and the bedroom, spending an hour or so there, as she was able, in the intervals of her work. She did not, however, take over all the duties of nurse at once. Lazare came back in the evening after going out with Louise, but he set off again the next morning; and each succeeding day, carried away as he was, absorbed more and more in outdoor life, his visits to Pauline grew shorter and shorter, till he soon stayed only long enough to inquire after her. Pauline, too, always told him to run off, if he merely spoke of sitting down; and when he and Louise returned together she made them tell her all about their walk, and grew quite bright amidst their animation and the touch of the fresh breezes which still seemed to cling to their hair. They seemed such good friends, and nothing else, that all her old suspicions of them had vanished. And when she saw Véronique coming towards her, with her draught in her hand, she cried out to her gaily:

'Oh! be off! You worry me!'

Sometimes she called Lazare to her to tell him to look after Louise, as though she had been a child.

'See that she doesn't get bored. She wants amusing. Take her for a good long walk; I shall get on very well without you for the rest of the day.'

When she was left alone, her eyes seemed to be following them from a distance. She spent her time in reading, waiting till she should be strong again, for she was still so weak that it quite exhausted her to sit up for two or three hours in an easy-chair. She would often let her book slip on to her lap, while her thoughts dreamily wandered off after her cousin and her friend. She wondered whether they were walking along the beach, and had got to the caves, where it was so pleasant on the sands amidst the fresh breezes and rising tide. In those long reveries she fancied that the feeling of sorrow which depressed her came merely from the fact that she was unable to be with them. She soon grew weary of reading. The novels which lay about the house, love-stories abounding in romantic falsity and treason, had always offended her sense of honour, for she felt how impossible it would be, after once giving her heart, to withdraw it again. Was it true, then, that people's hearts could lie so, and that, after having once loved, they could ever cease to love? She threw the books from her in disgust; and with her wandering gaze saw, in imagination, her cousin bringing her friend home, he supporting her weary steps, as they came along side by side, whispering and laughing.

'Here is your draught, Mademoiselle,' suddenly said Véronique, whose deep voice, coming from behind, aroused Pauline from her reverie with a start.

By the end of the first week Lazare never came to her room without first knocking. One morning as he opened the door he caught sight of her, combing her hair as she sat up in bed, with her arms bare.

'Oh! I beg your pardon!' he cried, stepping back.

'What's the matter?' said she. 'Are you frightened of me?' Then he took courage, but he was afraid lest he should embarrass her, and turned his head aside until she had finished fastening up her hair.

A fortnight before, when he had thought that she was dying, he had lifted her in his arms as though she had been a child, without even noticing her nakedness. But now the very disorder of the room disquieted him. And the girl herself, catching his feeling of uneasiness, soon refrained from asking of him any of the little services that he had lately been accustomed to render her.

'Shut the door, Véronique!' she cried one morning, as she heard the young man's step on the landing. 'Put all those things out of sight and give me that fichu.'

She was gradually growing stronger, and her great pleasure, when she was able to stand up and lean against the window, was to watch the progress that was being made with the defensive works. She could distinctly hear the blows of the hammers, and see the gang of seven or eight men, who bustled about like big ants over the yellowish shingle on the beach. Between the tides they worked away energetically, but they were obliged to retire before the rising water. It was with special interest, too, that Pauline's eyes followed Lazare's white jacket and Louise's pink gown, both of which glittered conspicuously in the sun. She followed them constantly with her gaze, and could have told their every action, almost their every gesture, throughout the day. Now that the operations were being pushed so vigorously forward they could no longer wander off together, or ramble to the caves inside the cliffs; and thus Pauline constantly had them within half a mile of her, always plainly visible beneath the wide expanse of sky, though their stature was reduced by distance to that of dolls. Quite unknown to herself, this jealous pleasure of accompanying them in fancy did much to cheer her convalescence and recruit her strength.

'It amuses you, eh, to watch the workmen?' Véronique used to repeat every day as she dusted the room. 'Well, it's much better for you than reading. Whenever I try to read I get a headache. And, besides, when one wants to get back strength, one must go and open one's mouth in the sunshine like the turkeys do, and drink in great mouthfuls of it.'

Véronique was not naturally of a talkative nature; she was even considered a little morose and taciturn; but with Pauline she chatted freely from a friendly impulse, believing that she did the girl good.

'It's a funny piece of business all the same! But it seems to please Monsieur Lazare. Though, indeed, he does not appear to be quite so full of it just now as he was. But he is so proud and obstinate that he will go on persisting in a thing, even if he is really sick to death of it. And if he just leaves those drunken fellows for a minute, they drive the nails in all crooked.'

After she had swept the floor under the bed she added:

'And as for the duchess—'

Pauline, who was scarcely listening to the woman, caught this word with surprise.

'The duchess? Whom are you talking of?'

'Mademoiselle Louise, of course! Wouldn't anyone say that she had sprung straight from Jupiter's thigh? If you were to go and look in her room and see all her little pots and pomades and scents——Why, as soon as ever you open the door, it all catches you at the throat, the place smells so! But she can't match you in good looks, for all that!'

'Oh, nonsense! I'm a mere country girl,' Pauline said with a smile; 'Louise is very graceful and refined.'

'Well, she may be all that; but she hasn't got a pretty face, all the same. I have had a good look at her when she has been washing herself; and I know that, if I were a man, I shouldn't be long in making up my mind between you.'

Carried off by her feeling of enthusiastic conviction, she came and leaned against the window, close to Pauline.

'Just glance at her there on the beach! Doesn't she look a mere shrimp? She is certainly a long way off, and one can't expect her to appear as big as a church, but she ought to show a figure of some sort! Ah! there's Monsieur Lazare lifting her up, so that she mayn't wet her pretty little shoes. She can't weigh very much in his arms, that's certain! But there are some men who seem to prefer bones!'

Véronique checked herself suddenly, as she felt Pauline quivering by her side. She was ever harping on this subject, as if she itched to talk of it. All that she heard and all that she saw—the conversations in the evening when Pauline was calumniated, the furtive smiles of Lazare and Louise, and the utter ingratitude of the whole family, which was rapidly growing into treason—stuck in her throat and made her choke. If she had gone up to the sick girl's room at the times when her honest heart glowed with a sense of some fresh injustice, she could not have restrained herself from revealing everything to Pauline, but her fear of making her ill kept her stamping about her kitchen, knocking her pots and pans about, and swearing that she could not go on much longer in that way, but would soon be driven into telling them all very roundly what she thought about them. However, when she got upstairs into Pauline's room, and a word that might vex or disturb the girl escaped her lips, she tried to recall it or explain it away with a touching awkwardness.

'But, thank goodness, Monsieur Lazare isn't the kind to fall in love with a bag of bones. He has been in Paris, and knows what's what. He has too much good taste. Look! he has set her on the ground again just as if he were throwing a match away!'

Then Véronique, in fear of letting her tongue slip again, began to flourish her feather brush once more; while Pauline, buried in deep thought, watched till evening Louise's pink gown and Lazare's white jacket both gleaming in the distance amidst the dark forms of the workmen. When she was beginning to feel fairly well again, Chanteau was seized with another violent attack of the gout; and this induced the young girl to come downstairs at once. The first time that she left her room it was to go and sit by the sick man's bedside. As Madame Chanteau said, very bitterly, the house was becoming quite a hospital. For some time her husband had not left his chair. After repeated seizures his whole body was now attacked by his foe; the disease mounted from his feet to his knees, and then to his elbows and hands. The little white pearl on his ear had fallen away, but others, of larger size, had appeared. All his joints became swollen, and spots of chalky tophus showed whitely, like lobster's eyes, through his skin in all parts. It was from chronic gout that he now suffered, chronic and incurable; the kind of gout which stiffens and deforms the body.

'Good heavens! what agony I'm in!' Chanteau kept repeating. 'My left knee is as stiff as a log; I can't move either my foot or my knee; and my elbow burns as though it were on fire. Just look at it!'

Pauline looked, and observed an inflamed swelling on his left elbow. He complained bitterly of the agony he was suffering there; indeed, it very soon became unendurable. He kept his arm stiffly stretched, as he sighed and groaned, with his eyes constantly fixed upon his hand, which was a pitiable sight, with all the finger-joints knotted and swollen, and the thumb warped as though it had been beaten with a hammer.

'I cannot keep like this. You must come and help me to move. I thought just now that I had got myself fairly comfortable, but I am as bad again as ever I was. It is just as though my bones were being scraped with a saw. Try to raise me a little.'

Twenty times in an hour did he have to be helped to change his position. He was in a continual state of anxious restlessness, always hoping to find relief in some new change. But Pauline still felt too weak to venture to move him without assistance.

'Véronique,' she would say softly, 'take hold of him very gently and help me to move him.'

'No, no! not Véronique!' Chanteau would cry out, 'she shakes me so!'

Then Pauline was obliged to make the effort herself, and her shoulders gave way under the strain. And, however gently she turned him round, he groaned and screamed so terribly that Véronique rushed hastily out of the room. She said that one needed to be a saint, like Mademoiselle Pauline, to be able to do such work, for the good God Himself would run away if He were to hear her master bellowing.

The paroxysms, however, became less acute, though they did not cease, but recurred frequently both day and night, keeping the sick man in a state of perpetual exasperation. It was no longer merely in his feet that he felt as though sharp teeth were gnawing at him, his whole body seemed bruised, as though it were being crushed beneath a millstone. It was impossible to afford him any relief; all that Pauline could do was to remain by his side and yield submissively to his caprices, ever changing his position for him, though without succeeding in giving him any lasting ease. The worst of the matter was that pain made him unjust and violent, and he spoke to her harshly, as though she were a very clumsy servant.

'Oh, stop! stop! you are as awkward as Véronique! Can't you manage it without digging your fingers into my body like that? Your hands are as clumsy as a gendarme's. Go away and leave me alone. I don't want you to touch me any more.'

But Pauline, without a word of self-defence, showing a submissive resignation nothing could ruffle, resumed her efforts with increased gentleness. When she imagined he was getting irritated with her she would conceal herself for a moment behind the curtains, hoping that his anger would cool when he no longer saw her. And often she would give way to silent tears in her hiding-place, not for the poor man's harshness towards her, but for the frightful martyrdom which made him so hasty and violent. She listened to him as he talked to himself amidst his sighing and groaning.

'She has gone away, the heartless girl! Ah! if I were to die, there would only be Minouche left to close my eyes. It is abominable to desert a human being in this way! I'll be bound she's gone off to the kitchen to have some broth!'

Then, after a little wrestling and struggling, he groaned more loudly, and ended by calling: 'Pauline, are you there? Come and raise me a little. I can't get easy as I am. Shall we try how the left side will do—shall we?'

Every now and then he would be suddenly seized with deep regret, and would beg the girl's pardon for having treated her unkindly. Sometimes he would tell her to fetch Matthew, for the sake of having another companion, fancying that the dog's presence would somehow or other alleviate his pain. But it was in Minouche rather than in Matthew that he found a faithful associate, for the cat revelled in the close, warm atmosphere of sick rooms, and spent her days lying on a couch near the bed. However, when the patient gave a more than usually loud cry she seemed surprised, and turned upon him, sitting on her tail, and staring at him with her big round eyes, in which glistened the indignant astonishment of a sober philosophic nature whose tranquillity had been deeply disturbed. What could possess him to make all that disagreeable and useless noise?

Every time that Pauline went out of the room with Doctor Cazenove she preferred the same request.

'Can't you inject a little morphia? It makes my heart bleed to hear him.'

But the doctor refused. It would do no good; the paroxysms would return again with increased violence. Since the salicylic treatment appeared only to have aggravated the disease, he preferred not to try any other drug. He spoke, however, of seeing what a milk diet might do as soon as the violence of the attack was over. Until then the patient was to keep to the most sparing diet and diuretic drinks, and nothing else.

'The truth is,' said Cazenove, 'that your uncle is a gourmand who is now paying dearly for all his fine dishes. He has been eating game; I know he has, for I saw the feathers in the yard. It will be much the worse for him in the end. I have warned him over and over again that the reason of his suffering is that, instead of denying himself such things, he prefers to yield to his appetite and take the consequences. But you yourself will act still more foolishly, my dear, if you over-exert yourself and make yourself ill again. Do be careful! You will, won't you? Your health still requires looking after.'

But she looked after it very little; she devoted herself to her uncle entirely, and all notion of time and even of life itself seemed to depart from her during the long days and nights that she passed by his bedside, with her ears buzzing with the groans and cries which ever filled the room. Her devotion and self-sacrifice were so complete that she actually forgot all about Louise and Lazare. She just exchanged a few words with them now and then, when she ran across them as she passed through the dining-room. By this time the work on the shore was finished, and heavy rains had kept the young people in the house for a week past; and, when the idea that they were together once suddenly occurred to Pauline, she felt quite happy to know that they were near her.

Never before had Madame Chanteau appeared so busy. She was taking advantage, she said, of the confusion into which her husband's illness threw the household to go through her papers, make up her accounts, and clear off arrears of correspondence. So in the afternoons she shut herself up in her bedroom, leaving Louise to her own resources; and the girl immediately went upstairs to Lazare, for she detested being alone. They thus got into the way of being together, remaining undisturbed till dinner-time in the big room on the second floor, that room which had so long served Pauline both for study and amusement. The young man's little iron bedstead was still there, hidden away behind the screen. The piano was covered with dust, and the table buried beneath an accumulation of papers, books, and pamphlets. In the middle of it, between two piles of dry seaweed, was a little model of a stockade, cut out of deal with a knife, and recalling the grandfather's masterpiece, the bridge which, in its glass case, adorned the mantelpiece in the dining-room.

For some time Lazare had been falling into a nervous condition. His workmen had irritated him, and he had just rid himself of the works on the shore as of a burden beyond his strength, without tasting the pleasure of seeing his work accomplished. Other plans now filled his head—vague projects for the future, appointments at Caen, operations which would bring him great fame. Yet he never took any definite active steps, but relapsed into a state of idleness which seemed to render him weaker, less courageous, every hour. The great shock which he had received from Pauline's illness added to mental disquietude a perpetual craving for the open air, a peculiar physical longing, as though he felt some imperious necessity of recouping himself after his struggle against pain and sorrow. The presence of Louise still further excited his feverishness. She did not seem able to speak to him without leaning upon his shoulder; she smiled close to his face, and her cat-like graces, the warmth that came from her person, and all the disturbing freedom of her manner quite turned his head. He was seized with a feeling against which his conscience struggled. With a friend of his childhood, in his mother's house, any idea of the sort, he told himself, was not to be thought of for a moment; and his sense of honour made his arms tingle with pain whenever he caught hold of Louise as they played together, and a thrill sent his blood surging through his veins. It was no thought of Pauline that kept him back. She would never have known anything about the matter. Amidst all his strange fancies he began to indulge in ferocious, pessimistic sallies respecting women and love. Every evil originated in women, who were, said he, foolish and fickle, and perpetuated grief by desire; while love was nothing but delusion, the onslaught of future generations which wished to come into existence. He thus retailed all Schopenhauer's views, over which the blushing girl grew very merry.

By degrees Lazare became more deeply enamoured of her, genuine passion arose from amidst his disdainful prejudices, and he threw himself into that fresh love with all his early enthusiasm, which was still straining after a happiness that ever seemed to evade him.

On Louise's side there had long been nothing but every-day coquetry. She delighted in receiving attentions and compliments, and flirting with pleasant men; and when one of them ceased to appear interested in her she seemed quite melancholy and out of her element. If Lazare neglected her for a moment or two, to write a letter, or to plunge into one of his sudden apparently groundless fits of melancholy, she felt so unhappy that she began to tease and provoke him, preferring danger to neglect. Later on, however, she experienced some alarm as she felt the young man's burning breath fanning her neck like a flame. But though aware of the danger, she seemed unable to change her ways.

On the day when Chanteau's attack reached its worst point the whole house shook with his bellowing: prolonged heart-rending plaints, like the death-cries of a beast in the hands of the slaughterer. After breakfast, of which she had hastily partaken in a state of nervous irritation, Madame Chanteau rushed from the room, saying:

'I can't endure it any longer; I shall begin to scream myself if I stop here. If anyone wants me, I shall be in my own room writing. And you, Lazare, take Louise upstairs with you and try to amuse her, for the poor girl is not having a very gay time here.'

They heard her bang her door on the first floor, while her son and the girl climbed to the one above.

Pauline had gone back to her uncle. She, in her pity for so much suffering, was the only one who retained her calmness. If she could do nothing but just sit with him, she wished, at any rate, to afford the poor man whatever comfort could be derived from not being left to suffer in solitude. She fancied that he bore up more bravely against his pain when she looked at him, even if she did not speak a single word. For hours she would sit in this way by his bedside, and the gaze of her big compassionate eyes indeed soothed him somewhat. But that day, with his head hanging over the bolster, his arm stretched out, and his elbow racked with agony, he did not even recognise her, and screamed yet more loudly whenever she approached him.

About four o'clock Pauline, in a state of desperation, went into the kitchen to speak to Véronique, leaving the door open behind her, as she intended returning immediately.

'Something must really be done,' she said. 'I should like to try some cold compresses. The doctor says they are dangerous, though they are successful sometimes. Can you give me some linen?'

Véronique was in a frightfully bad temper.

'Linen? I've just been upstairs to get some dusters, and a nice reception I got! I had no business to come disturbing them up there! Oh, it's a nice state of things!'

'But you might ask Lazare for some,' Pauline continued, without yet understanding Véronique's remarks.

Then the servant, carried away by her anger, set her arms a-kimbo, and, without taking time to think of what she was saying, burst out: 'Yes, I should think so, indeed! They are much too busy gallivanting up there!'

'What do you mean?' the girl stammered, growing very pale.

Véronique, alarmed at what she had said, attempted to recall those words which she had so long been keeping to herself. She tried to think of some explanation, some fib to tell Pauline, but she could hit upon nothing that seemed of any service. By way of precaution she had grasped the girl's wrists, but Pauline freed herself with a sudden jerk, and bounded wildly up the staircase, so choked, so convulsed by anger that Véronique dared not follow her, trembling as she did with fear at the sight of that pallid face, which she could scarcely recognise. The house seemed to be asleep; the upper floors were wrapped in silence, and nothing but Chanteau's yell came from below to disturb the perfect quietude. The girl sprang with a bound to the landing of the first floor, where she jostled against her aunt, who stood there, like a sentinel, barring any further advance. She had probably been keeping guard in this way for some little time.

'Where are you going?' she asked.

Pauline, still choking with emotion, and exasperated at this hindrance to her progress, could not at first answer.

'Let me pass!' she at last managed to stammer, making on angry gesture, before which Madame Chanteau quailed. Then, with another bound she rushed up to the second floor, while her aunt, rooted to the spot, threw up her arms, but spoke no word. Pauline was possessed by one of those stormy fits of rebellion which broke out amidst all the gentle gaiety of her nature, and which, even when she was a mere child, had afterwards left her in a prostrate fainting condition. For some years past she believed that she had cured herself of them. But an impulse of jealousy had just thrilled her so violently that she could not have restrained herself without shattering herself entirely.

When she reached Lazare's door on the top floor, she threw herself against it. The key was bent by her impetuous onset, and the door clattered back against the wall. And the sight she then beheld brought her indignation to a climax. Lazare was clasping Louise in his arms against the wardrobe and raining kisses on her chin and neck, she passive, half-fainting, unable to resist his embrace. They had begun, no doubt, in mere sport, but the sport seemed likely to have a disastrous ending. At Pauline's appearance there was a moment of stupefaction. They all three looked at each other. Then, at last, Pauline burst out:

'Oh! you hussy! you hussy!'

It was the girl's treason that angered her more than anything. With a scornful gesture she pushed Lazare aside, as though he were a child of whose pitiful weakness she was well aware. But this girl, her own familiar friend, had stolen her husband from her while she was busy nursing a sick man down below! She caught her by the shoulders, shook her, and was scarcely able to keep from striking her.

'What do you mean by this? Tell me! You have been behaving infamously, shamelessly! Do you hear me?'

Then Louise, still in a state of stupor, and with her eyes wandering vacantly, stammered:

'He held me; I could not get away.'

'He! Why, he would have burst into tears if you had simply pushed him with your little finger!'

The sight of the room itself increased her anger—that room where she and Lazare had loved each other, where she, too, had felt her blood pulse more quickly through her veins at the warm touch of the young man's breath. What should she do to this girl to satisfy her vengeance?

Lazare, dazed, overcome with embarrassment, had just resolved to attempt some interference, when Pauline dashed Louise from her so violently that the girl's shoulders struck the wardrobe.

'Ah! I'm afraid of myself. Be off!'

And that was all she could now find to say. She chased the other through the room, drove her out upon the landing and down the staircase, crying after her perpetually:

'Be off! be off! Get your things together and be off!'

Madame Chanteau was still standing on the landing of the first floor. The rapidity of the scene had given her no opportunity to interfere. But she now recovered her power of speech and signed to Lazare to shut himself in his own room, while she tried to soothe Pauline, pretending at first to be very much surprised at what had happened. Meantime Pauline, having driven Louise into her bedroom, still kept on repeating:

'Be off! be off!'

'What do you mean?' her aunt asked her. 'Why is she to be off? Are you losing your head?'

Then the young girl stammered out the whole story. She was overcome with disgust. To her frank, honourable nature such conduct appeared utterly shameless and incapable of either excuse or pardon. The more she thought about it the more indignant she felt, rebelling against it all in her horror of deceit and her faithfulness of heart. When one had once bestowed one's self, one could not withdraw the gift.

'Be off! Pack up your things at once and be off!' she repeated.

Louise, completely overcome, unable to find a word to say in her own defence, had already opened her drawers to get her clothes together. But Madame Chanteau was growing angry.

'Stay where you are, Louisette. Am I the mistress of my own house? Who is it that presumes to give orders here and allows herself to send my guests away? Such behaviour is infamous! We are not living in a slum here!'

'Didn't you hear me, then?' cried Pauline. 'I caught her up there with Lazare. He had her in his arms, and was kissing her!'

Madame Chanteau shrugged her shoulders. All her stored-up bitterness broke out in words of base suspicion.

'They were only playing; where was the harm of it? When he was nursing you in your room, did we ever interfere?'

The young girl's excitement suddenly subsided. She stood quite motionless, pale, astounded at the accusation which was thus launched against her. It was she who was now being arraigned as guilty; her aunt appeared to suspect her of disgraceful conduct.

'What do you mean?' she cried. 'If you had really thought anything wrong you would not have allowed it for a moment!'

'Well, you are not children! But I don't want my son to lead a whole life of misconduct. And you had better leave off harassing those who still remain honest women.'

For a moment Pauline continued silent, with her big pure eyes fixed upon Madame Chanteau, who turned her own away. Then she went up the stairs to her room, saying curtly:

'Very well, it is I who will leave.'

Then silence fell again, a heavy silence, in which the whole house seemed to collapse. Athwart that sudden quietude Chanteau's groans suddenly rose once more like those of an agonized deserted animal. They seemed to grow louder and louder; they made themselves distinctly heard till they drowned all other sound.

And now Madame Chanteau began to regret the words which had escaped her. She recognised the irreparable nature of the insult, and felt much disturbed in mind lest Pauline should actually carry out her threat of immediate departure. With such a girl everything was possible, and what would people say of herself and her husband if their ward should set off scouring the country and telling the story of their rupture? Perhaps she would take refuge with Doctor Cazenove, which would certainly give rise to a dreadful scandal in the district. At the bottom of Madame Chanteau's embarrassment there lurked a fear of the past; of all the money which had been lost—a loss which might suddenly be brought up against them.

'Don't cry, Louisette,' she said, feeling angry with Pauline again. 'Here we are, in a bother again all through her folly. She's always going on in this mad, violent way. It's impossible to live quietly with her. But I will try to make matters comfortable.'

'Oh no, let me go away, I beg you,' Louise cried. 'It would be too painful for me to stop here. She is right; I had better go.'

'Not to-night, at any rate. I must see you safely to your father's house. Just wait a moment, and I will go upstairs and see if she is really packing her things.'

Madame Chanteau gently went upstairs and listened at Pauline's door. She heard her walking hurriedly about the room, opening and shutting her drawers. For a moment she thought of entering, provoking an explanation, and bringing the affair to an end with a flood of tears. But she was afraid; she felt that she would stammer and blush before the girl, and this feeling served to increase her hatred of her. So, instead of knocking at the door, she went downstairs to the kitchen, treading as silently as she could. An idea had just occurred to her.

'Have you heard the row to which Mademoiselle Pauline has just been treating us?' she asked Véronique, who had begun furiously polishing her brass-ware.

The servant, with her head bent over the polish, made no answer.

'She is getting quite unbearable! I can do nothing with her. Would you believe that she is actually talking about leaving us at once? She is packing her things at this moment. I wish you would go upstairs and try to reason with her.'

Then, as she still got no answer, she added:

'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.