THE JOY OF LIFE (continued 5)

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

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

'You are exaggerating!' she murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Well?' asked Pauline.

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

'It is all over with her!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'You would do better to go away.'

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

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

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

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

'All right,' Madame Chanteau murmured.

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

'Oh! certainly not.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'No, Madame, it was Mademoiselle Pauline.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Is it the same as I had yesterday?'

'Yes, aunt.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cazenove made a gesture of doubt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'You think, then, that she will see the day out?' the girl inquired.

'Yes, I feel sure that she will live till to-morrow,' Cazenove answered. 'But don't lift her up any more, or she might die in your arms. I shall come again this evening.'

It was settled that Abbé Horteur should remain with Chanteau and gradually prepare him for the fatal issue. Véronique stood listening near the door while this was being agreed upon, and her face assumed a scared expression. Ever since the probability of her mistress's death had become clear to her she had scarcely opened her lips, but sought to render all possible service with the silent devotion of a faithful animal. But the conversation was hushed, for Lazare, wandering over the house, now came up the staircase; he had lacked the courage to be present at the Doctor's visit and to inquire the truth as to his mother's danger. However, the mournful silence with which he was greeted forced the knowledge upon him in spite of himself, and he turned very pale.

'My dear boy,' said the Doctor, 'you had better come along with me. I will give you some lunch and bring you back with me in the evening.'

The young man turned yet more pallid and replied: 'No, thank you; I would rather not go away.'

From that moment Lazare waited, feeling a terrible pressure upon his breast, as if an iron band were drawn tightly round him. The day seemed as though it would never end, and yet it passed away without any consciousness on his part of how the hours went by. He had no recollection of how he had spent them, wandering restlessly up and down the stairs, and gazing out upon the distant sea, the sight of whose ceaseless rocking dazed him yet more. At certain moments the irresistible flight of the minutes seemed to be materialised, and to become the onslaught of a mass of granite driving everything into the abyss of nothingness. Then he grew exasperated and longed for the end, in order that he might be released from the strain of that terrible waiting. About four o'clock, as he was once more creeping up to his own room, he turned suddenly aside and entered his mother's chamber. He felt a desire to see her and kiss her once again. But, as he bent over her, she went on pouring out her incoherent talk, and did not even turn her cheek towards him in that weary manner with which she had received him ever since the beginning of her illness. Perhaps she did not see him, he thought; indeed, it was no longer his mother who lay there with that livid face and lips already blackened.

'Go away,' Pauline said to him gently. 'Go out for a little while. I assure you that the hour has not yet come.'

And then, instead of going up to his room, Lazare rushed downstairs and out of the house, ever with the sight of that woeful face, which he could no longer recognise, before him. He told himself that his cousin had lied, that the hour was really at hand; but then he was stifling, and needed space and air, and so he rushed on like a madman. The thought that he would never, never again see his mother tortured him terribly. But he fancied he heard some one running after him, and when he turned and saw Matthew, who was trying to overtake him at a heavy run, he flew without cause into a violent passion, and picked up stones and hurled them at the dog, storming at him the while, to drive him back to the house. Matthew, amazed at this reception, trotted back some distance, and then turned and gazed at his master with his gentle eyes, in which tears seemed to glisten. He persisted in following Lazare from a distance, as though to keep watch over his despair, and the young man found it impossible to drive him away. But the immensity of the sea had an irritating effect upon Lazare, and he fled into the fields and wandered about them, looking for out-of-the-way corners where he could feel alone and concealed. He prowled up and down till night fell, tramping over ploughed land, breaking his way through hedges. At last, worn out, he was returning homewards, when he beheld a sight which thrilled him with superstitious terror. At the edge of a lonely road there stood a lofty poplar, black and solitary, over which the rising moon showed like a yellow flame; and the tree suggested a gigantic taper burning in the dusk at the bedside of some giantess lying out there across the open country.

'Come, Matthew! Come!' he cried in a choking voice. 'Let us get on!'

He reached the house running, as he had left it. The dog had ventured to draw near, and licked his hands.

Although the night had now fallen, there was no light in the kitchen. It was empty and dark, with only the glow of the charcoal embers reddening the ceiling. The gloom weighed upon Lazare, and he lacked the courage to go further. Overcome with fear and emotion, he remained standing amidst the litter of pots and dusters, and strained his ears to catch the sounds with which the house was quivering. On one side he heard a slight cough; it came from his father, to whom Abbé Horteur was talking in low continuous tones. But what most frightened the young man was the sound of hushed voices and hasty steps on the stairs, and a muffled noise on the upper floor, which he could not account for, though it suggested something being hurriedly accomplished with as little noise as possible. He did not dare to go and see what it meant. Could it be all was over? He was still standing there perfectly motionless, without courage enough to go and inquire the truth, when he saw Véronique come down. She rushed into the kitchen, lighted a candle, and carried it away with her so hurriedly that she neither spoke to the young man nor looked at him. The kitchen, after being lighted for a moment, relapsed into darkness. Up above the stir was ceasing. Once more did the servant come down, this time to get a bowl, and again she displayed silent, desperate haste. Lazare no longer felt any doubt. All must be over. Then, overcome, he sank down upon the edge of the table, and waited amidst that darkness, without knowing for what he was waiting, his ears buzzing the while in the deep silence that had just fallen.

Upstairs, for two hours past, Madame Chanteau's last agony—an agony so awful that it thrilled Pauline and Véronique with horror—had been following its course. Her dread of poison having reappeared, she raised herself up in bed, still wildly rambling on, gradually mastered by furious delirium. She wished to jump out of bed and escape from the house, where someone wanted to kill her; and it was all that the young girl and the servant could do to restrain her.

'Let me go! I shall be murdered! I must escape at once, at once!'

Véronique tried to calm her.

'Oh! Madame, don't you see us? You can't suppose that we should let any harm come to you.'

The dying woman, exhausted by her violent struggles, lay for a moment panting. Her dim eyes wandered anxiously round the room, as though she were looking for something. Then she resumed:

'Shut up the secrétaire! It is in the drawer. Ah! there she is coming upstairs! Oh! I am afraid! I tell you that I can hear her! Don't give her the key. Let me go, at once, at once!'

Then again she began to struggle, while Pauline held her in her arms.

'Aunt, there is no one here. There are only ourselves.'

'No! no! Listen! There she is! Oh, God! God! I shall die! The hussy has made me drink it all—I am going to die! I am going to die!'

Her teeth chattered, and she sought protection in the arms of her niece, whom she did not recognise. Pauline mournfully strained her to her heart, no longer fighting against that horrible suspicion, but resigning herself to the knowledge that her aunt would carry it to her grave.

Fortunately Véronique was watching, and threw her arms forward crying:

'Take care, Mademoiselle! Take care!'

It was the supreme convulsive struggle. By a violent effort Madame Chanteau had succeeded in throwing her swollen legs out of bed, and, but for the servant's presence, she would have fallen on the floor. Her whole body was shaken by delirium; she broke into incoherent spasmodic cries, while her fists clenched as though she were engaging in a close struggle, defending herself against some phantom that clutched her by the throat. At that supreme moment she must have understood that she was dying; there was an expression of intelligence in her eyes which horror dilated. For a moment a frightful spasm of pain made her press her hands to her breast. Then she fell back on her pillow and turned black. She was dead.

Deep silence fell. Pauline closed her aunt's eyes, but she was exhausted, and incapable of doing anything further. When she left the room, leaving there both Véronique and Prouane's wife, whom she had sent for after the Doctor's visit, her strength gave way; she was obliged to sit down for a moment on the stairs, and no longer felt the courage to go and tell Lazare and Chanteau the truth. The walls seemed to be turning round her. A few minutes went by; then she again laid her hand upon the banister, but on hearing Abbé Horteur's voice in the dining-room she preferred to enter the kitchen. And there she found Lazare, whose gloomy face showed against the red glow of the embers in the grate. Without speaking a word she stepped towards him and opened her arms. He understood, and threw himself upon the young girl's shoulder, while she pressed him to her in a long embrace. They kissed each other on the face, while she wept silently; but he was unable to shed a single tear; emotion was stifling him, he could scarcely breathe. At last the girl unclasped her arms, saying the first words that came to her lips:

'Why are you here without a light?'

He made a gesture, as though to signify that he had no need of any light in his great sorrow.

'We must light a candle,' she said.

Lazare had fallen upon a chair again, incapable, as he was, of keeping on his feet. Matthew restlessly wandered about the yard, sniffing the damp night air. At last he came back into the kitchen and looked keenly at them in turn, and then went and rested his head on his master's knee, remaining there and silently questioning him, with his eyes fixed upon the young man's. Lazare began to tremble at the dog's persistent gaze, and suddenly the tears gushed from his eyes and he burst into sobs, throwing his arms the while round the neck of the old dog which his mother had loved for fourteen years. And he began to stammer in broken words:

'Ah! my poor old fellow! my poor old fellow! We shall never see her again!'

Notwithstanding her emotion, Pauline had succeeded in finding and lighting a candle. She made no attempt to console Lazare; she was glad to find him able to shed tears. There was still a painful task before her, that of informing her uncle of his wife's death. Just as she was making up her mind to go into the dining-room, whither Véronique had taken a lamp at the beginning of the evening, Abbé Horteur had managed to explain to Chanteau, in long ecclesiastical phrases, that there was no chance of his wife's recovery, and that her death was only a question of hours. And so when the old man saw his niece enter the room, overcome with emotion and her eyes red from weeping, he knew what had happened, and his first words were:

'Mon Dieu! there was only one thing that I would have asked for: I should have liked to see her once more while she lived!—But, ah, these wretched legs of mine! These wretched legs!'

He said scarcely anything else. He shed a few bitter tears which quickly dried, and vented a few sighs, but he speedily returned to the subject of his legs, falling foul of them and ending by pitying himself. For a few moments they discussed the possibility of carrying him to the first floor in order that he might give the dead woman a last kiss; but, apart from the difficulties of the task, they considered that the emotion of such a farewell might have a dangerous effect on him; and, besides, he did not seem very anxious about the matter himself. So he remained in the dining-room near the draught-board, without knowing how to occupy his poor weak hands, and not even having his head clear enough, he said, to be able to read and understand the newspaper. When they carried him to bed, old memories seemed to awaken in him, for he shed many tears.

Then came two long nights and a day that seemed endless: those terrible hours during which death dwells in the house. Cazenove had only returned to certify the death, once more surprised by the rapidity with which the end had come. Lazare did not go to bed the first night, but spent his time till morning in writing to his relations at a distance. The body was to be taken to the cemetery at Caen and buried in the family vault there. The Doctor had kindly promised to see to all the formalities, and the only painful matter in connection with them was the necessity for Chanteau, as Mayor of Bonneville, to receive the declaration of his wife's death. As Pauline had no suitable black dress, she hastened to make one out of an old skirt and a merino shawl, which she cut into a bodice. In the midst of these occupations the first night and the following day passed; but the second night seemed endless, rendered the more interminable by the mournful prospect of the morrow. No one was able to get any sleep; the doors remained open, and lighted candles were left upon the stairs and tables, while even the most distant rooms reeked of carbolic acid. They were all in the grasp of grief, and went about with blurred eyes and clammy lips, feeling but one dim need, that of clutching hold of life once more.

At last, about ten o'clock the next morning, the bell of the little church on the other side of the road began to toll. Out of respect to Abbé Horteur, who had behaved so well and kindly under the sad circumstances, the family had determined that the religious ceremony should be performed at Bonneville, before the body was removed to the cemetery at Caen. As soon as Chanteau heard the bell toll, he began to wriggle about in his chair.

'I must see her go away, at any rate,' he repeated, 'Oh! these wretched legs of mine! What a misery it is to have such wretched legs as mine are!'

It was to no purpose that they tried to keep him from beholding the mournful spectacle. As the bell began to toll more quickly, he grew angry and exclaimed:

'Wheel me out into the passage. I can hear them bringing her down. Be quick! be quick! I must see her go away!'

Pauline and Lazare, who were in full mourning and had already put on their gloves, were obliged to do as he bade them. Standing, the one on his right and the other on his left, they wheeled the arm-chair to the foot of the staircase. Four men were just bringing the corpse downstairs, bending beneath its great weight. As Chanteau caught sight of the coffin, with its new wood and glittering handles and large brass name-plate, he made an instinctive effort to rise, but his leaden legs kept him down, and he was obliged to remain seated in his chair, shaken by such a convulsive trembling that his very jaws chattered. The narrowness of the staircase made the descent difficult, and he gazed at the big yellow box as it slowly came towards him, and, as it passed his feet, he bent over to read the inscription on the plate. There was more room in the passage, whence the bearers moved quickly towards the bier, which was standing before the door. Chanteau's eyes were still fixed on the coffin, and with it he saw forty years of his life depart, happy years and unhappy years, which he sadly regretted, as one ever does regret one's youth. Pauline and Lazare were weeping behind his chair.

'No, no! Leave me here!' he said to them, as he saw them prepare to wheel him back again to his place in the dining-room. 'You go along; I will stay here and watch.'

The bearers had laid the coffin on the bier, which was lifted by some other attendants. The little procession was formed in the yard, which was full of people of the neighbourhood. Matthew, who had been shut up since early morning, was whining from under the door of the coach-house amidst the profound silence; while Minouche, seated on the kitchen window-sill, examined with an air of surprise both the concourse of people and the box that was being carried away. As they still continued to linger, the cat grew tired of watching and began to lick her stomach.

'You are not going, then?' Chanteau said to Véronique, whom he had just perceived near him.

'No, sir,' she replied in a choking voice. 'Mademoiselle told me to stay with you.'

The church-bell was still tolling, and at last the coffin left the yard, followed by Pauline and Lazare, whose blackness seemed intensified by the sunlight. And, sitting in his invalid's chair in the open doorway of the hall, Chanteau watched his wife's body being borne away.

VII

The funeral matters and certain business affairs that had to be attended to detained Lazare and Pauline in Caen for a couple of days. When they set out on their journey home, after paying a farewell visit to the cemetery, the weather had broken up and there was a strong gale blowing. They left Arromanches in a storm of rain, and the wind blew so strongly that it threatened to carry the hood of their trap away. Pauline thought of her first journey when Madame Chanteau had brought her from Paris. It was just such a stormy day as this, and her poor aunt had kept warning her not to lean out of the conveyance, while perpetually refastening a muffler that she wore round her neck. Lazare, too, in his corner of the trap, sat thinking of the past, and in his mind's eye saw his mother waiting to welcome him after each of his journeys along that road as she had ever done. One December, he remembered, she had walked a couple of leagues to meet him, and he had found her seated on yonder milestone. Thus reflecting, amidst the rain which poured unceasingly, the girl and her cousin did not exchange a single word between Arromanches and Bonneville.

Just as they were reaching home, however, the downpour stopped, but the wind's violence increased, and the driver was obliged to alight from his seat and take hold of the horse's bridle. At the moment of reaching the house Houtelard, the fisherman, ran past them.

'Ah! Monsieur Lazare!' he cried; 'it's all done for this time! The sea's breaking all your timbers to bits down yonder!'

The sea was not visible from that bend of the road. The young man, who had raised his head, had just caught sight of Véronique standing on the terrace and gazing towards the shore. On the other side, sheltering himself behind his garden wall, for fear lest the wind should rend his cassock, Abbé Horteur stood straining his eyes in the same direction. He bent forward and cried:

'It's washing your piles away!'

Thereupon Lazare walked down the hill, followed by Pauline, in spite of the storminess of the weather. When they came to the foot of the cliff they were amazed by the sight which they beheld. It was one of the September flood-tides, and the sea was rushing up in wild commotion. No warning had been issued of any probable danger, but the gale, which had been blowing from the north since the previous day, had thrown the sea into such tumult that mountains of water towered up in the distance and, rolling onward, broke with a mighty roar over the rocks. In the far distance the sea looked black beneath the shadow of the clouds which raced over the livid sky.

'Get into the trap again,' said the young man to his cousin. 'I will just see how things look, and come back directly.'

Pauline made no reply, but followed Lazare as far as the shore. There the piles and a great stockade which had been recently constructed were being subjected to a frightful assault. The waves, which ever seemed to be growing larger, rushed against them in quick succession, like so many battering-rams. They came on like an innumerable army; fresh masses sprang forward without a moment's cessation. Their huge green backs, crested with foam, curved on every side, and sped forward with giant strength; and, as these monsters dashed against the stockades, they burst into a mighty rain of drops, then fell in a mass of white boiling foam, which the sea seemed to suck in and carry away. The timbers cracked beneath the violence of each of those furious onsets. The supports of one groyne were already broken, and a great central beam, still secured at one end, swayed hopelessly like the dead trunk of a tree whose branches had been stripped off by grape-shot. Two others offered more resistance, but they were shaking in their fixings, as though gradually overpowered in that surging grasp, which seemed bent on wearing out their strength in order to dash them to pieces.

'I told you how it would be!' repeated Prouane, who was very drunk, and stood leaning against the broken shell of an old boat. 'I told you how it would be when the wind blew like this. A lot the sea cares about that young man and his bits of sticks!'

Jeers greeted these words. All Bonneville was there, men, women, and children; and they were all very much amused at seeing the thundering slaps which fell upon the stockades. The sea might smash their hovels to fragments; they still loved it with an admiring awe, and they would have felt it a personal insult if the first young man who tried had been able to conquer it with a few beams and a couple of dozen bolts. And they grew excited as with a feeling of individual triumph as they saw the sea at last awake, unmuzzle itself, and throw its great jaws forward.

'Look! look!' cried Houtelard. 'That's a smasher! It has swept a couple of beams away!'

They called to each other, and Cuche tried to reckon up the waves.

'It will take three more, and then you'll see! There's one! That's loosened it! There's two! Ah! that's swept it away! Two have sufficed to do it, you see! Ah, the old hussy she is!'

He referred to the sea, uttering the word 'hussy' as if it were a term of endearment. Affectionate oaths arose, children began to dance whenever a heavier wave than usual crashed and snapped another of the timbers. Yet another broke, and yet another; there would soon be not one left, they would all be crushed like fleas. But though the tide still rose, the great stockade still remained firm. It was the sea's struggle against this which was most anxiously awaited, for it would be the decisive contest. At last the mounting waves dashed between the timbers, and the spectators prepared themselves to laugh.

'It's a pity the young man isn't here,' said that rascal Tourmal in a jeering voice, 'or he might lean against it and try to keep it up.'

A 'Hush!' made him silent, for some of the fishermen had just caught sight of Lazare and Pauline. The latter, who were very pale, had heard Tourmal's sneer, and they continued to gaze at the disaster in silence. It was a mere trifle, the smashing of those beams, but the tide would go on rising for another two hours, and the village would certainly suffer if the stockade did not hold out. Lazare had passed his arm round his cousin's waist, and was holding her close to him to protect her from the squalls which, as cutting as scythe-blades, blew against them. A mournful gloom fell from the black sky and the waves howled, and the two young people, in their deep mourning, remained motionless amidst the flying foam and the clamour that was ever growing louder. Around them the fishermen were now waiting, still with a jeering expression on their lips, but feeling increasing anxiety.

'It won't last much longer now!' Houtelard murmured. The stockade still resisted, however. At each wave that struck it its black, pitch-coated timbers still showed forth amidst the white waters. But as soon as one of the beams was broken, the adjoining ones began to fall away, piece by piece. For fifty years past the oldest men there had not known such a heavy sea. Soon they had to retire, the beams which had been torn away were dashed violently against the others, and gradually wrought the complete destruction of the stockade, whose fragments were furiously hurled ashore. There was but one left upright, standing there like a post marking a sandbank. The Bonneville folks had given over laughing now; the women were carrying off their crying children. The 'hussy' had fallen upon them again, and the stupor that came of despairing resignation to the ruin which was certainly at hand now fell on that little spot, nestling so closely to the sea which both supported and destroyed it. There was a hasty retreat, a gallop of heavy boots. Everyone took refuge behind the walls of shingle, by which alone the houses were now protected. Some of the piles here were already yielding, planks had been knocked out, and enormous waves swept right over the walls which were too low to stay their course. Soon there was nothing left to offer resistance, and a mass of water, dashing against Houtelard's house, smashed the windows and deluged the kitchen. Then there came perfect rout, and only the victorious sea remained dashing unimpeded up the beach.

'Don't go inside!' the men shouted to Houtelard. 'The roof will fall in.'

Lazare and Pauline had slowly retired before the flood. It was impossible to render any assistance, and, climbing the hill homewards, they were about half-way up it when the girl turned, and gave a last look at the threatened village.

'Poor people!' she murmured.

But Lazare could not pardon them for their idiotic laughter. He was wounded to the heart by that disaster, which for him was a personal defeat; and, making an angry gesture, he at last opened his mouth and growled:

'Let the sea lie in their beds, since they're so fond of it! I certainly won't try to prevent it!'

Véronique came to meet them with an umbrella, for the rain had begun falling heavily again. Abbé Horteur, who was still sheltering himself behind his wall, called a few words to them which they could not catch. The frightful weather, the destruction of the stockade, and the woe and danger in which they were leaving the village, cast additional sadness upon their return home. The house seemed cold and bare as they entered it; nothing but the wind, with its ceaseless moaning, disturbed the silence of the mournful rooms. Chanteau, who was dozing before a coke-fire, began to cry as soon as they appeared. They refrained from going upstairs to change their clothes, in order that they might escape the terrible associations of the staircase. The table was already laid and the lamp lighted, so they sat down to dinner immediately.

It was a sinister night; the deafening shocks of the waves, which made the walls tremble, broke in upon the few words that were spoken. When Véronique brought the tea into the room she announced that Houtelard's house and five others were already swept away, and that half the village would certainly share the same fate this time. Chanteau, in despair at not yet having recovered his mental equilibrium after the sufferings he had gone through, silenced her by saying that he had enough troubles of his own, and didn't want to hear about those of other people. When they had put him to bed, the others went off to rest also, worn out as they were with fatigue. Lazare kept a light burning till morning; and half a score times at least during the night Pauline anxiously slipped out of bed and gently opened her door to listen; but only death-like silence now ascended from the first floor.

The next day there commenced for the young man a succession of those lingering, poignant hours which come in the train of great sorrows. He awoke with the sensation of recovering from unconsciousness after some painful fall, from which his body was still stiff and bruised. Now that the troubled dreams which had oppressed him had passed away, his mind vividly recalled the past. Each little detail presented itself clearly before him, and he lived all his griefs again. The reality of death, which had never been within his personal experience, was brought home to him by the loss of his poor mother, who had been so suddenly carried off after a few days' illness. His horror of ceasing to be seemed to assume a more tangible form. There had been four of them, but now there was a yawning gap in their midst, and three of them were left behind to shiver painfully in their wretchedness, and cling desperately to each other in their attempts to regain some fragment of lost vital warmth. This, then, was death: this was the 'Nevermore'—a circling of trembling arms around a shadow, of which naught remained save a wild regret.

Every hour, as the image of his mother arose before him, Lazare seemed to be losing her over again. At first he had not suffered so much, not even when his cousin had come downstairs and thrown herself into his arms, nor during the prolonged misery of the funeral. It was only since his return to the empty house that he had felt the full weight of his loss; and he grew wild with remorse that he had not wept more and manifested greater grief while there yet remained in the house something of her who was now for ever gone.

Sometimes he would almost choke with sobs as he reproached himself with not having loved his mother sufficiently. He was perpetually recalling her; and her form was ever before his eyes. When he went up the stairs he half expected to see her come out of her room with the quick, short steps with which she had been wont to hurry along the landing. He often turned, fancying he heard her behind him, and he was so absorbed in thinking of her that sometimes he even felt sure that he heard the rustling of her dress behind the door. At night he did not dare to extinguish his candle, and in the dim light he fancied that he heard furtive sounds approaching his bed, and a faint breath hovering over his brow. His grief, instead of being assuaged, grew keener; at the least recollection came a nervous shock, a vivid but fugitive apparition, which, as it faded away, left him in all the anguish which the thought of death inspired.

Everything in the house reminded him of his mother. Her room remained untouched; nothing had been changed, a thimble was still lying upon the table beside a piece of embroidery. The clock on the mantelpiece had been stopped at twenty-three minutes to eight, the time of her death. He usually shunned the room, though sometimes, as he was hastily rushing upstairs, a sudden impulse constrained him to enter it; and then, as his heart throbbed wildly within him, it seemed to him that the old familiar furniture—the secrétaire, the table, and especially the bed—had acquired an awe-inspiring aspect, which made them different from what they had formerly been. Through the shutters, which were kept closed, there filtered a pale light, whose vague glimmer added to his distress as he went to kiss the pillow on which his mother's head had lain in the icy cold of death. One morning when he went into the room he paused astounded. The shutters had been thrown wide open and the full light of day poured into the chamber. A bright sheet of sunshine streamed over the bed to the very pillow, and the room was decked with flowers, placed in all the vases that the house possessed. Then he recollected that it was an anniversary, the birthday of her who had departed; a day which had been observed every year, and which his cousin had remembered. There were only the flowers of autumn there—some asters, marguerites, and the last lingering roses, already touched by frost—but they were sweetly redolent of life, and they set joyous colours round the lifeless dial, which seemed to mark the arrest of time's progress. That pious womanly observance filled Lazare with emotion, and for a long time he remained there weeping.

The dining-room, the kitchen, and the terrace, too, equally reminded him of his mother. All the little objects he saw lying about suggested her to him. He was quite beset by his mother's image, though he never spoke of it, and indeed, with a feeling of uneasy shame, tried to conceal the constant torture which he experienced. He even avoided mentioning his mother's name, so that it might have been supposed that he had already forgotten her, whereas all the time never a moment passed without memory bringing a bitter pang to his heart. It was only his cousin who penetrated his secret, and when she spoke to him about it he took refuge in falsehoods, protesting that he had put out his light at midnight, and had been very busy over some work or other. And he almost worked himself into an angry passion if he were further pressed. He took refuge in his room, and there abandoned himself to his reflections, feeling calmer in that retreat where he had grown up, free from the fear of revealing to others the secret of his distress.

At first he had tried to force himself to go out and resume his long walks, thinking that by doing so he would at any rate escape Véronique's grumpy taciturnity and the painful sight of his father, who lay listlessly in his chair, not knowing how to occupy himself. But he now felt an invincible distaste for walking; out of doors he grew weary with a weariness that almost amounted to discomfort. The sea with its perpetual surging, its stubborn waves that broke against the cliffs twice a day, irritated him as being a mere senseless force that recked nothing of his grief, and had gone on wearing the same rocks away for centuries, without ever shedding a single tear for the death of a human being. It was too vast, too cold; and he hurried back home again and shut himself up in his room, that he might feel less conscious of his own littleness, less crushed between the boundlessness of sea and sky. There was only one spot that had any attraction for him, and that was the graveyard which surrounded the church. His mother was not there, but he could think of her there with a melting tenderness; and, despite his horror of death, the place had a singularly calming effect upon him. The tombs lay asleep, as it were, amongst the grass; there were yew-trees which had sprung up in the protecting shade of the church, and not a sound was to be heard save the call of the curlews, hovering in the wind from the open. There he forgot himself for hours amongst the old tombstones, whence the very names of those who had long since passed away had been obliterated by the heavy rains from the west.

If Lazare had felt any belief in another world, if he had been able to think that he would one day again meet those he loved at the other side of the grave's black wall, he would have been far happier; but this consolation was denied him, he felt no doubt as to death being the end and extinction of individual life. And yet his own individuality, which ill-brooked the thought of being snuffed out, rose up in mutiny against his convictions. What joy there would have been in entering upon a fresh life elsewhere, far away amongst the stars, a new existence in which he would have been once again surrounded by all he loved! Ah! if he could only believe in that, how the agony he now suffered would be turned to sweetness, in looking forward to rejoin lost loved ones! How thrilling would be their kisses at meeting, and what blessedness it would be to live all together again in some realm where there would be no more death! He was racked with agony at the thought of the charitable falsehoods of creeds compassionately designed to hide the terrible truth from those too weak to bear it. No! Death was the end of everything; nothing that we had loved could ever bud into fresh life, the good-bye was said for ever. Oh! those awful words—'for ever'! It was they that carried his brain into the dizzy vertigo of empty nothingness.

One morning, as Lazare was brooding beneath the shadow of the yews, he caught sight of Abbé Horteur at the bottom of his vegetable garden, which was only separated from the graveyard by a low wall. Wearing an old grey blouse and a pair of wooden shoes, the priest was digging a cabbage-bed; and, with his face browned by the keen sea air and the back of his neck scorched by the sun, he looked like an old peasant bending over his work. With a miserable stipend, and without any casual remuneration in the shape of fees in that little out-of-the-way parish, he would have died of sheer starvation if he had not been able to eke out his livelihood by growing a few vegetables. What little money he had went in charity, and he lived quite alone, assisted only by a young girl from the village, and often obliged to cook his own meals. To make matters worse, the soil of that rocky spot was scarcely good for anything, and the wind withered the young plants, so that it was scarcely worth while to cultivate the stony ground for the sake of the meagre return he got. When he put his blouse on, he always tried to keep himself from notice, for fear lest it should give anyone cause to scoff at religion; and Lazare, knowing this, was about to withdraw when he saw him take his pipe out of his pocket, fill it with tobacco, and then light it with a loud smacking of his lips. Just as he was enjoying his first puffs, however, the Abbé caught sight of the young man. He then made a hasty movement, as though he wished to hide his pipe, but finally broke into a laugh, and called: