THE JOY OF LIFE (continued 6)

'Ah! you are enjoying the fresh air. Come in and have a look at my garden.'

And, as Lazare came up to him, he added gaily:

'Well, you see, you find me in the midst of a debauch. It is the only pleasure I get, my friend, and I'm sure that it will not offend God.'

Thereupon he put his pipe in his mouth again, and puffed away freely, only taking it out at times to make a short remark. For instance, the priest of Verchemont worried him. That priest was a happy man, possessing a really fine garden with a good and fruitful soil; but he never so much as touched a garden tool. And next the Abbé complained to Lazare about his potatoes, which had been falling off for the last two years, though the soil, he said, was exactly suited to them.

'Don't let me disturb you,' Lazare replied. 'Please go on with what you were doing.'

The Abbé then resumed his digging.

'Yes, indeed, I must get on,' he said. 'The youngsters will be here for the catechism class presently, and I want to get this bed finished before they come.'

Lazare had seated himself on a slab of granite, some ancient tombstone, placed against the low wall of the churchyard. He watched Abbé Horteur struggling with the stones and listened to him while he talked on in a shrill voice that suggested a child's; and, as the young fellow watched and listened, he wished that he could be as poor and as simple-minded as the priest, with a brain as empty and a body as tranquil. The mere fact that the Bishop had allowed Abbé Horteur to grow old in that wretched cure showed how innocent and guileless the good man had the reputation of being. Besides, he was one of those who never complain, and whose ambition is satisfied so long as they have bread to eat and water to drink.

'It isn't very cheerful living amongst all these tombs,' the young man remarked, thinking aloud.

The priest stopped digging in surprise.

'What! not cheerful?'

'Well, you have got death perpetually before your eyes. I should think you must dream about it at nights.'

The priest took his pipe out of his mouth and spat upon the ground.

'No, indeed, I never dream about it at all. We are all in the hands of God.'

Then, he began to dig again, driving his spade into the ground with a blow of his heel. His faith kept him free from fear, and his imagination never strayed beyond what was revealed in the catechism. Good folks died and went to heaven. Nothing could be simpler and more encouraging. He smiled in a convinced sort of way; that stolid, unwavering theory of salvation sufficed for his narrow brain.

From that time forward Lazare visited the priest almost every morning in his garden, He would sit down on the old tombstone and forget his thoughts as he watched the Abbé cultivating his vegetables; he even gained a temporary tranquillity by the contemplation of the other's blind faith which enabled him to live in the midst of death without disquiet. Why couldn't he himself, he thought, become a simple child again, like that old man? In the depths of his heart he harboured some lurking hope that his dead faith might be fanned into life again by his converse with the guileless, simple-minded priest, whose tranquil ignorance had such a charm for him. He began to bring a pipe with him, and the pair of them smoked together while they chatted about the slugs that devoured the salad plants, or the manure that was too expensive, for it was seldom that the priest spoke of God. With his spirit of tolerance and long experience he reserved the Divinity for his own personal salvation. Other people looked after their affairs in their way and he looked after his in his fashion. After thirty years of unavailing preaching and warning he now strictly confined himself to the observance of his ministerial duties. It was very kind of that young man, he thought, to come and see him every day, and as, with his tolerant and charitable disposition, he did not want to cavil with him nor to inveigh against the theories which he must have brought back from Paris, he preferred to keep on talking with him about the garden; and thus Lazare, with his head buzzing with all the priest's simple gossip, sometimes thought that he was really on the point of relapsing into that happy age of ignorance when fear is unknown.

But though the mornings thus glided away, Lazare every night, up in his room, still brooded over the memory of his mother, without being able to summon up enough courage to put out his candle. His faith was dead. One day, as he sat smoking with Abbé Horteur, the latter hastily put his pipe out of sight on hearing the sound of footsteps behind the pear-trees. It was Pauline, who had come to look for her cousin.

'The Doctor is in the house,' said she, 'and I have asked him to stay to lunch. You'll come in soon, won't you?'

She was smiling, for she had caught sight of the Abbé's pipe beneath his blouse. The priest quickly pulled it out again, with that cheerful laugh to which he was addicted whenever he was discovered smoking.

'It's very silly of me,' he said. 'People would think I had been committing a crime. See! I am going to light it again before you!'

'I tell you what, your reverence!' Pauline exclaimed gaily; 'come and lunch with us and the Doctor, and you can smoke your pipe afterwards.'

The priest was delighted, and immediately replied:

'Well yes, I accept. I will follow you directly. I must just put my cassock on. And I will bring my pipe with me; I promise I will.'

It was the first luncheon, since Madame Chanteau's death, at which the dining-room had re-echoed with the sound of laughter. Abbé Horteur smoked his pipe after dessert, and this made them all merry, but he evinced such genial humour over this indulgence that it at once seemed quite natural. Chanteau, who had eaten heartily, grew quite lively under the cheering influence of this fresh stir of life in the house. Doctor Cazenove told stories about savages, while Pauline beamed with pleasure at hearing all the noise, hoping that it might perhaps draw Lazare from his moody despondency.

After that luncheon, Pauline determined to revert to the Saturday dinners, which had been broken off by her aunt's death. The Abbé and the Doctor came regularly to these repasts, and the family life was resumed on its old lines once more. They jested together, and the widower would clap his hands on his legs and protest that, if it wasn't for that confounded gout, he would get up and dance, so jovial did he feel. It was only Lazare who still remained in an unsettled state; his gaiety was forced, and he often shook with a sudden shudder while he was noisily chattering.

One Saturday evening, in the middle of dinner, Abbé Horteur was summoned to the bedside of a dying man. He did not even wait to empty his glass, but set off at once, without paying any heed to the Doctor, who had visited the man before coming to dine and had told the Abbé he would find him already dead. The priest had shown himself so weak in intellect that evening that as soon as his back was turned Chanteau remarked:

'There are times when there seems to be very little in him.'

'I would willingly change places with him,' Lazare roughly rejoined. 'He is much happier than we are.'

The Doctor laughed.

'That may be so. Matthew and Minouche are also happier than we are. Ah! I recognise in that remark of yours the young man of to-day, who has nibbled at the sciences and filled himself with discontent because they have not enabled him to satisfy his old ideas of the absolute, ideas which he sucked in with his mother's milk. At the very first attempt you want to discover every truth in the sciences, whereas we can barely decipher them, when, maybe, the inquiry will go on for ever. Then you begin to say that there is nothing in them, and you try to fall back upon your old faith, which will have nothing more to do with you, and so you drop into pessimism. Yes! pessimism is the disease of the end of the century. You are a set of Werthers turned upside down!'

This was the Doctor's favourite subject, and he grew quite animated over it. Lazare, on his side, exaggerated his denial of all certainty, and his belief in final and universal evil.

'How can we live,' he asked, 'when at every moment things give way beneath our feet?'

The old man yielded to an impulse of youthful passion as he retorted:

'Why, just go on living! Isn't life itself sufficient? Happiness consists in action.'

Then he abruptly addressed himself to Pauline, who was listening with a smile on her face.

'Come now!' he said, 'tell us what you do to be always cheerful!'

'Oh!' she replied, in a joking tone, 'I try to forget all about myself, for fear lest I should grow melancholy, and I think about others; that occupies my mind, and makes me bear my troubles patiently.'

This reply seemed to irritate Lazare, who, prompted by a spirit of malicious contradiction, asserted that women ought to be religious; and he pretended that he could not understand why Pauline had ceased to fulfil her duties for so long a time. Thereupon the girl gave her reasons in her tranquil manner.

'It is very easily explained,' she said. 'Confession proved very distasteful to me and hurt my feelings, and it affects many women, I think, in the same way. Then, again, I can't bring myself to believe things that seem contrary to reason. And, that being so, why should I tell a lie by pretending that I do believe them? And, besides, the unknown in no way disquiets me; it can only be a logical outcome of life, and it seems to me best to await it as tranquilly as possible.'

'Hush! Here's the Abbé!' interrupted Chanteau, whom this conversation was beginning to bore.

The man was dead, and the Abbé placidly finished his dinner, after which they each drank a little glass of chartreuse.

Pauline had now assumed the management of the household. All the purchases and every detail of the establishment came under her inspection, and a big bunch of keys dangled from her waist. She took over the control as a matter of course, and Véronique showed no sign of displeasure at it. The servant had been very morose, however, since Madame Chanteau's death, and almost appeared to be in a state of stupor. Her affection for the dead woman seemed to revive, and she once more began to treat Pauline with suspicious surliness. It was to no purpose that the latter spoke softly and soothingly to her; she took offence at a word, and could often be heard muttering and grumbling to herself in the kitchen. And whenever, after intervals of obstinate silence, she indulged in those muttered soliloquies, she always appeared to be overwhelmed by stupefaction at Madame Chanteau's death. Had she known that her mistress was going to die, she moaned to herself? If she had had any notion of such a thing, she would never have thought of saying what she had said. Justice before everything! It wasn't right to kill people, even if they had their faults. But she washed her hands of it all, she growled; it would be so much the worse for the person who was the real cause of the misfortune. Still, this assurance did not seem to calm her, for she went on growling and struggling against imaginary transgressions.

'What's the matter that you are perpetually worrying yourself like this?' Pauline asked her one day. 'We both did all we could; but we can do nothing against death.'

Véronique shook her head.

'Ah! people don't usually die like that. Madame Chanteau was what she was, but she took me in when I was quite a little girl, and I could cut my tongue out if I thought that anything I ever said had aught to do with her death. Don't let us talk about it any more; it would end badly.'

No further reference had been made by Pauline and Lazare to their marriage. Chanteau, who was desirous of bringing the matter to a conclusion, now that the main obstacle to it had disappeared, had ventured to allude to it one day when Pauline came and sat near him with her sewing to keep him company. He felt a keen desire to retain her beside him and a great horror of again falling into the hands of Véronique should his niece ever leave him. Pauline, however, gave him to understand that nothing could be settled until the completion of the period of mourning. It was not a feeling of propriety alone that prompted her to make that vague reply, but she was also looking to time to answer a question which she dared not attempt to answer herself. The suddenness of her aunt's death, that terrible blow from which neither she nor her cousin had yet recovered, had brought about a kind of truce between their wounded affections, from which they were gradually awaking, only to suffer the more on finding themselves, amidst their irreparable loss, face to face with their own distressful story: Louise driven out of the house; their love shattered, and, perhaps, the whole course of their existences modified. What was to be done now? Did they still love each other? Was their marriage possible or advisable? Questions like these floated through their minds, amidst the stupor in which they were left by the sudden blow that had fallen upon them, and neither the one nor the other seemed anxious to force on a solution.

With Pauline, however, the recollection of the insult offered to her had lost much of its bitterness. She had long ago forgiven Lazare, and was quite ready to place her hand in his whenever he should show repentance. She had not the least jealous desire to see him humiliate himself before her; her only thought was for him, so that she might give him back his promise if he no longer loved her. Her whole anguish lay in that doubt: did he still love Louise?—or had he forgotten her and returned to the old affections of his early youth? However, as she thus thought of giving Lazare up rather than make him unhappy her heart sank, for, though she trusted she would have the courage to do so, if necessary, she hoped she would die soon afterwards.

Ever since her aunt's death an impulse of generosity had moved her to bring about a reconciliation between herself and Louise. Chanteau might write to Louise, and she herself would just add a line to say that she had forgotten what had happened. They all felt so lonely and dull that the other's presence would distract them from their gloomy thoughts. Since the terrible shock of her aunt's death, all that had happened previously seemed very far away, and Pauline had often regretted that she had behaved so violently. Yet, whenever she thought of speaking to her uncle on the subject, a feeling of repugnance held her back. Wouldn't it mean imperilling the future, tempting Lazare, and perhaps losing him altogether? However, perhaps she might still have found courage and pride enough to subject him to this risk, if her sense of justice had not risen in revolt against it. It was the treason alone that seemed to her so unpardonable. And then, again, was she not capable of restoring happiness and life to the house? Why call in a stranger, when she was conscious that she herself was brimming over with willing devotion and affection? Without being aware of it, there was a touch of pride in her abnegation, and she was a little jealous in her devotion. She yearned to be her relatives' one and only solace.

From this time all Pauline's endeavours were turned in that direction. She laid herself out in every way, to make those about her cheerful and happy. Never before had she shown herself so persistently cheerful and kindly. Every morning she came down with a bright smile and fixed determination to conceal her own griefs in order that she might do nothing to add to those of others. Her gentle amiability seemed to set all troubles at defiance, and she possessed a sweet evenness of disposition which disarmed all feeling against her. She was now in perfect health again, strong and sound as a young tree, and the happiness that she spread around her was the emanation of her own healthy brightness. The arrival of each fresh day delighted her, and she found a pleasure in doing what she had done the day before, perfectly contented and quiet in mind, and looking forward to the morrow without any touch of feverish expectation. Though Véronique went on muttering in her kitchen, and indulged in strange and inexplicable caprices, a fresh burst of life was driving all mournfulness from the house; the merry laughter of former days rang through the rooms and echoed up the staircase. Chanteau himself seemed particularly delighted by the change, for the gloominess of the house had always weighed on him. Existence, in his case, had really become abominable, yet he clung to it with the desperate clutch of a sick man who holds dearly to life, though it be but pain to him. Every day that he managed to live seemed to be a victory achieved, and his niece appeared to him to brighten and warm the house like a beam of sunlight, beneath whose rays death could not lay its chilly touch upon him.

Pauline, however, had one source of trouble. Lazare seemed proof against all her attempts to console him, and she grew distressed as she saw him falling again into a sombre mood. Lurking behind his grief for his mother, there was a revival of his terror of death. Now that the lapse of time was beginning to mitigate his original sorrow, this terror of death asserted all its old sway over him, heightened by the fear of hereditary disease. He felt sure that he too would succumb to some derangement of his heart, and he brooded over the certainty of a speedy and tragic end. He was constantly listening to the sounds of life within him, observing, in a state of nervous excitement, the working of his stomach, kidneys, and liver; but it was particularly his heart-beats which absorbed him. If he laid his elbow upon the table, he heard his heart beating in his elbow; if he rested his neck against the back of a chair, he heard it throbbing there; if he sat down, if he went to bed, he heard it beating in his thighs, his sides, his stomach; and ever and ever its throbbing seemed to him to be telling out his life like a clock that is running down. Dazed by this constant study of his organism, he perpetually alarmed himself with the fear that he was on the point of breaking down. All his organs were worn out, he fancied, and his heart, which disease had distended to a monstrous size, was about to rend his frame in pieces by its hammer-like beating.

In this way Lazare's mental sufferings went on increasing. For many years, every night as he lay down in bed the thought of death had frozen him to the marrow, and now he dared not go to sleep, racked as he was with the fear of never awaking. Sleep was hateful to him, and he experienced all the horror of dying as he felt himself growing drowsy, falling into the unconsciousness of slumber. His sudden waking gave him still a greater shock, dragging him out of black darkness, as though some giant hand had clutched him by the hair and hurled him back into life again, shivering and stammering with horror of the mysterious unknown through which he had passed. He clasped his hands convulsively, more desperate and panic-stricken than ever at the thought that he must die. He suffered such torture every night that he preferred not to go to bed. He found that he could lie down on the sofa and sleep in the daytime in perfect peace, and it was probably that heavy slumber during the day which made his nights so terrible. By degrees he gave over going to bed at night at all, preferring his long siestas of the afternoon, and afterwards only dozing off towards daybreak, when the fear of darkness was driven away.

He had, however, intervals of calmness, and at times he would remain free from his haunting fears of death for two or three nights in succession. One day Pauline found an almanack in his room, dotted over with red ink. She asked him the meaning of the marks.

'What have you marked it for like this? Why are all those days dotted?'

'I haven't marked anything,' he stammered. 'I know nothing about it.'

Then his cousin said gaily: 'I thought it was only girls who trusted to their diaries things that they wouldn't tell anyone else. If you have been thinking about us on all the days you have marked, it is very nice of you indeed. Ah! I see you have secrets now!'

However, as she saw him become more and more disturbed, she was good-natured enough to press him no further. On the young man's pale brow she saw the shadow which she knew so well, the shadow left by that secret trouble which she seemed powerless to alleviate.

For some time past he had also been astonishing her by fresh eccentricities. Possessed by a firm conviction that his end was close at hand, he never left a room, or closed a book, or used anything without thinking that it was the last time he would do so, and that he would never again see the thing he had used, the book he had closed, or the room he had left; and he had thus contracted a habit of bidding continual farewells, yielding to a morbid craving to take up and handle different objects that he might see them once more. With all this were mingled certain ideas of symmetry. He would take three steps to the right and then as many to the left, and touch the different articles of furniture on either side of a window or door the same number of times. And beneath this there lurked the superstitious fancy that a certain number of touchings, some five or seven, for instance, distributed in a particular fashion, would prevent the farewell from being a final one. In spite of his keen intelligence and his denial of the supernatural, he carried out these foolish superstitious practices with animal-like docility, though trying to hide them as though they were some shameful failing. This was the revenge taken by the deranged nervous system of this pessimist and positivist, who declared that he believed only in what was actually known. He was becoming quite a nuisance, though.

'Why are you pacing up and down like that?' Pauline cried at times. 'That's three times you've gone up to that cupboard and touched the key. It won't run off!'

In the evening it seemed as though he would never be able to get away from the dining-room. He arranged all the chairs in a certain order, tapped the door a particular number of times, and then entered the room again to lay his hands, first the right and then the left, on his grandfather's masterpiece. Pauline, who waited for him at the foot of the stairs, at last broke out into a peal of laughter.

'What idiotic behaviour for a man of twenty-four! Where is the sense, I should like to know, in touching things in that way?'

But after a time she ceased to make a jest of him, for she felt much distressed by his disquietude. One morning she surprised him kissing—seven times in succession—the framework of the bed on which his mother had died. The sight filled her with alarm, and she began to guess the torments which embittered his existence. When she saw him turn pale as he came upon a reference to the twentieth century in a newspaper, she gave him a compassionate glance which made him turn his head aside. He recognised that she understood him, and he rushed off and hid himself in his own room, all shame and confusion. Over and over again did he upbraid himself as a coward, and swear that he would resist the influence of this weakness. He would argue with himself and bring himself to look death in the face, and then in a spirit of bravado, instead of passing the night awake on his couch, he would quickly undress and jump into bed. Death, he would then say to himself, might come and would be welcome; he would await it there as deliverance. But immediately the throbbing of his heart drove all his oaths away, an icy breath seemed to freeze his bones, and he frantically stretched out his hands as he broke into a despairing cry of 'O God! God!' It was these terrible backslidings which filled him with shame and despair. His cousin's tender pity, too, only served to overwhelm him. The days grew so heavy that as he saw them begin he scarcely dared to hope that they would ever end. In this gradual decay of his vitality, his cheerfulness had been the first to depart, and now physical strength seemed to be failing him in its turn.

Pauline, however, in the pride of her self-devotion, was determined to gain the victory. She recognised the source of her cousin's disease, and tried to impart to him some of her own courage by giving him a love of life. But her compassionate kindliness seemed to receive a continual check. At first she made open attacks upon him with her old jests and jokes about 'that silly, stupid pessimism.' 'What!' she said, 'was it she now who had to chant the praises of the great Saint Schopenhauer, while he, like all the humbugging pessimists, was quite willing to see the world blown to pieces, but refused to be blown up himself?' These jests wrung a constrained smile from the young man, but he seemed to suffer from them so much that she did not persist in them. She next tried the effect of such caressing consolations as might be lavished upon a child, and encompassed him with cheerful amiability and placid laughter. She always let him see her beaming with happiness and revelling in, the pleasantness of life. The house seemed full of sunshine. There was nothing more required of him than to take advantage of it and let his life flow quietly on, but this he could not do; the happiness that was offered to him only made his feeling of horror at what was to come hereafter all the keener. Then Pauline tried stratagem, and racked her brain to promote enthusiasm in something or other which might have the effect of making him forget himself. But his idleness had become a sort of disease; he had no inclination for anything whatever, and found even reading too great an exertion, so that he spent his whole time in gnawing at himself.

For a moment Pauline had a glimpse of hope. They had gone one day for a short walk on the sands, when Lazare, as they reached the ruins of the stockades, a few of the beams of which were still standing upright, began to explain a new system of protective works which, he assured her, could not fail to prove successful. The collapse of the former ones had been caused by the weakness of the supporting timbers. It would only be necessary to double their thickness and to give a greater inclination to the central beams. His voice vibrated and his eyes lighted up with all his old enthusiasm as he spoke, and his cousin besought him to take up the task again and make another effort. The village was gradually being destroyed; every high tide swept away a further portion of it; and there could be no doubt that, if he went to see the Prefect, he would succeed in obtaining the subvention, while she herself would be only too glad to make further advances in order to assist such a noble work. She was so anxious to spur him into action that she would willingly have sacrificed the remains of her fortune to bring about that end. But he only shrugged his shoulders. What would be the good of it, he asked? He turned pale as the thought struck him that, if he were to commence the work, he would be dead before he could finish it; and, to hide the perturbation which this reflection caused him, he began to inveigh against the Bonneville fishermen.

'A pack of grinning idiots, who jeered at me when that wolfish sea swept everything away! No! no! they may do things for themselves now! I won't give them another chance of laughing at my "bits of sticks," as they called them.'

Pauline tried to soothe him. The poor folk were in a terrible state of wretchedness. Since the sea had carried off the Houtelards' house, the most solidly built of all the village, together with three others, cottages of the poorer fishermen, their misery had increased. Houtelard, who had once been the rich man of the district, had now taken up his quarters in an old barn, some twenty yards behind his former dwelling; but the others, who had no such refuge, were housing themselves in clumsy huts made out of the shells of old boats. They were living in a miserable state of nudity and promiscuousness; the women and children were wallowing in vice and vermin. All that was bestowed upon them in charity went in drink. The wretched creatures sold all the food that was given them, with their clothes, pots, and pans, and what little furniture they had left, in order to buy drams of the terrible 'calvados,' which stretched them on the ground across their doorways like so many corpses. Pauline was the only one who still continued to say a word for them. Abbé Horteur had given them up, and Chanteau talked of sending in his resignation, being unwilling to remain any longer the Mayor of such a drove of swine. Lazare, too, when his cousin tried to excite his pity on behalf of that little colony of drunkards, beaten down by the fierceness of the elements, only repeated his father's eternal refrain:

'No one compels them to remain here. All that they have to do is to go elsewhere. Only a pack of idiots would come and stick themselves right under the waves.'

This was the general feeling of the neighbourhood, and everyone looked upon the Bonneville folk as obstinate fools. The villagers, on the other hand, were mistrustfully unwilling to go elsewhere. They had been born there, they said, and why should they have to leave the place? The same sort of thing had been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years, and there was nothing for them to do anywhere else. Prouane, when he was exceptionally tipsy, always concluded by saying that wherever they might go they would always be devoured by something or other.

Pauline used to smile at this and nod her head in approval, for happiness, in her opinion, depended neither upon people nor circumstances, but on the more or less reasonable way in which people conformed themselves to their circumstances. She redoubled her care and attention, and distributed still larger doles and alms than before. At last she was able to induce Lazare to associate himself with her in her charities; she hoped that she might thereby rouse him from his gloomy broodings, and lead him to forget his own troubles by awaking in him pity for those of others. Every Saturday afternoon he remained at home with her, and from four o'clock till six they received the young folk from the village, the ragged draggle-tail urchins whom their parents sent up to get what they could out of Mademoiselle Pauline. It was an invasion of snivelling little lads and dirty little girls.

One Saturday it was raining, and Pauline could not distribute her alms on the terrace, as was her custom. Lazare had to fetch a bench and place it in the kitchen.

'Good gracious, sir!' Véronique exclaimed. 'Surely Mademoiselle Pauline isn't going to bring all that dirty lot in here? It's a nice idea, indeed; if they do come, I won't answer for the state of the soup.'

At that moment the girl entered the kitchen with her bag of silver and her medicine-chest. She merrily replied to Véronique's indignant outburst:

'Oh! a turn of your broom will make things all right again; and, besides, it's raining so heavily that they will have had a good washing before they come in, poor little things!'

And, indeed, the cheeks of the first to enter were quite bright and rosy from the downpour. They were so soaked that pools of water trickled from their ragged clothes on to the tiles of the kitchen-floor, thereby increasing the servant's wrath, which was by no means diminished when Pauline told her to light a faggot of wood to dry them a little. The bench was carried near the fire, and was soon occupied by a shivering row of impudent, leering brats, who cast greedy eyes at what was lying about—some half-emptied wine-bottles, the remains of a joint, and a bunch of carrots lying on a block.

'Children indeed!' Véronique went on growling. 'Children that are grown up and ought to be earning their own living. They'll go on pretending to be children till they're five-and-twenty, if only you'll let them!'

But Pauline bade her be silent.

'There! have you done now? Talking like that won't fill their mouths or help them to grow up.'

The girl sat down at the table, with her money and the other articles she intended to distribute in front of her; and she was just about to call the children to her in turn, when Lazare, who had remained standing, caught sight of Houtelard's boy amongst the other youngsters, and shouted out:

'Didn't I forbid you to come here again, you young vulture? Your parents ought to be ashamed of themselves for sending you here, for they are quite able to feed you, whereas there are so many others who are dying of hunger.'

Houtelard's son, an overgrown lad of fifteen, with a timid and sad expression, began to cry.

'They beat me if I don't come,' he said. 'The missis got hold of the rope and father drove me out.'

He turned up his sleeve to show a big violet bruise on his arm which had been caused by a blow from a piece of knotted rope. The 'missis' was the old servant whom the lad's father had married, and who was gradually killing the boy by her ill-treatment. Since the loss of their house, their harshness and miserly filthiness had increased, and now their home was a perfect pigsty, where they tortured the lad, as if to revenge themselves for their misfortunes on him.

'Put an arnica compress on his arm,' said Pauline softly to Lazare.

Then she herself gave the lad a five-franc piece. 'Here! give them this so that they shan't beat you any more, and tell them that if they strike you again, and if there are any bruises on your body next Saturday, they will never get another sou out of me.'

All along the bench the other children, cheered by the warming blaze, were now tittering and digging each other in the ribs with their elbows. One tiny little thing had stolen a carrot and was munching it furtively.

'Come here, Cuche!' said Pauline. 'Have you told your mother that I hope to get her admitted very soon into the Hospital for Incurables at Bayeux?'

Cuche's wife, a miserable abandoned woman, had broken her leg in July, and had remained infirm ever since.

'Yes, I told her,' the lad replied in a hoarse voice; 'but she says she won't go.'

He had grown into a strong young fellow, and was now nearly seventeen years old. With his hands hanging at his sides, he swayed about in an awkward manner.

'What! She won't go!' cried Lazare. 'And you won't come, either; for I told you to come up this week and help a little in the garden, and I'm still waiting for you.'

The lad still swayed himself about. 'I haven't had any time,' he replied.

At this Pauline, seeing her cousin about to lose his temper, interposed and said to the lad:

'Sit down again now, and we will speak about it presently. Just reflect a little or you will make me angry too.'

It was next the turn of the Gonins' little girl. She was thirteen years old, and still had a pretty rosy face beneath a mop of fair hair. Without waiting to be questioned, she poured out a flood of prattle, telling them how her father's paralysis was ascending to his arms and even his tongue, and that he could now only grunt like an animal. Cousin Cuche, the sailor who had deserted his wife and installed himself in Gonin's house, had made a violent attack upon the old man that very morning, in the hope of finishing him off.

'Mother sets on him too. She gets up at night and empties bowls of cold water over father, because he snores so loud and disturbs her. If you could only see what a state they have left him in, Mademoiselle Pauline! He is quite naked, and he wants some sheets very badly, for all his skin is getting grazed and peeling off!'

'There! That will do; hold your tongue!' said Lazare, interrupting her chatter; while Pauline, moved to pity, sent Véronique off to look out a pair of sheets.

Lazare considered the girl much too wide-awake for her age, and he believed that, although she did perhaps sometimes ward off a blow meant for her father, she treated him in the long run no better than the others did. Moreover, he felt quite sure that whatever was given to her, whether it was money, or meat, or bed-linen, instead of being of any service to the infirm old man, would only serve for the gratification of his wife and cousin Cuche.

He began to question her sternly, for he had seen her gadding about with several lads of the neighbourhood. However, Pauline laid her hand upon his arm, for the other children, even the youngest amongst them, were sniggering and smiling with all the impudence of precocious vice. How was it possible to arrest that spreading rottenness when the men and women set so bad an example? When Pauline had given the girl a pair of sheets and a bottle of wine, she whispered to her for a moment or two, trying to frighten her as to the consequences which might result from misbehaviour. Warnings of this kind were the only ones that might hold her in check.

Meantime Lazare, wishing to hasten the distribution, the length of which was beginning to disgust and irritate him, called up Prouane's daughter.

'Your father and mother were tipsy again last night,' he said, 'and I hear that you were worse than either of them.'

'Oh! no, sir! I had a very bad headache.'

He placed before her a plate in which were a few pieces of raw meat.

'Eat that!'

She was devoured with scrofula again, and her nervous disorders had reappeared. Drunkenness increased her precocious infirmities, for she had acquired the habit of drinking with her parents. When she had swallowed three lumps of the meat, she stopped and made a grimace of disgust.

'I've had enough; I can't eat any more.'

But Pauline had taken up a bottle.

'Very well,' she said! 'if you don't eat the meat, you shan't have your glass of quinine wine.'

On hearing this, the girl fixed her glistening eyes on the glass, which Pauline filled, and overcame her repugnance against the meat. Then she seized the glass and tossed its contents down her throat with all a drunkard's knowing readiness. But she did not then retire; she begged Pauline to let her take the bottle away with her, saying that it interfered too much with what she had to do to come up to the house every day; and she promised to take the bottle to bed with her, and to keep it so securely hidden that her father and mother would never be able to find it and drink the wine. Pauline, however, refused to let her have it.

'You'd swallow every drop of it before you got to the bottom of the hill,' said Lazare. 'It's yourself that we suspect now, you little wine-cask!'

One by one the children left the bench to receive money, or bread, or meat. Some of them, after receiving their share of the distribution, seemed inclined to linger before the blazing fire, but Véronique, who had just noticed that half her carrots had been devoured, drove them off pitilessly into the rain. 'Had anyone ever seen anything like it before?' she cried. 'Carrots, too, that still had all the earth sticking to them!'

Soon there was no one left but young Cuche, who looked very depressed in the expectation of receiving a severe lecture from Pauline. She called him to her, spoke to him for a long time in low tones, and finished by giving him his loaf and the hundred sous which he received from her every Saturday. Then he went off, with his clumsy swaying, having duly promised to work, but having no intention whatever of doing anything of the kind.

The servant was just giving a sigh of relief when she suddenly exclaimed:

'Hallo! they haven't all gone yet, then! There's one of them over there in the corner still!'

It was the Tourmals' little girl, the little abortion of the high roads, who, notwithstanding her ten years, was still quite a dwarf. It was only in shamelessness and effrontery that she seemed to grow, and she groaned more miserably and seemed more wretched than ever, trained for the profession of begging from her cradle, just as some infants have their bones manipulated in order that they may become acrobats. She crouched between the dresser and the fireplace, as though she had stowed herself in that corner for fear of being surprised in some wrong-doing.

'What are you up to there?' Pauline asked her.

'I am warming myself.'

Véronique cast an anxious glance round her kitchen. On previous Saturdays, even when the children had assembled on the terrace, various little articles had disappeared. That day, however, everything seemed in its place, and the little girl, who had hurriedly risen to her feet, began to deafen them with her shrill voice:

'Father is in the hospital, and grandfather has hurt himself at his work, and mother hasn't a gown to go out in. Please have pity upon us, kind young lady—-'

'Do you want to split our ears, you little liar?' Lazare cried angrily. 'Your father is in gaol for smuggling, and when your grandfather sprained his wrist he was robbing the oyster-beds at Roqueboise, and, if your mother hasn't got a dress, she must manage to go out stealing in her chemise, for she is charged with having strangled five fowls belonging to the innkeeper at Verchemont. Do you think you can befool us with your lies about matters that we know more of than you do yourself?'

The child did not even appear to have heard him. She went on immediately with all her impudent coolness:

'Have pity upon us, kind young lady! My father and grandfather are both ill, and my mother dare not leave them. God Almighty will bless you for it.'

'There! that will do! Now go away and don't tell any more lies!' Pauline said to her, giving her a piece of money to get rid of her.

She did not want telling twice, but hurried from the kitchen and through the yard as quickly as her little legs would carry her. Just at that moment the servant uttered a cry:

'Ah! the cup that was on the dresser! She's gone off with your cup, Mademoiselle Pauline!'

Then she bolted off in pursuit of the young thief, and a couple of minutes afterwards dragged her back into the kitchen with all the stern ferocity of a gendarme. It was as much as they could do to search the child, for she struggled and bit and scratched and screamed as though they were trying to murder her. The cup was not in her pocket, but they discovered it next to her skin, hidden away in the rag which served her as a chemise. Thereupon ceasing to weep, she impudently asserted that she did not know it was there, that it must have dropped into her clothes while she was sitting on the floor.

'His reverence was quite right when he said she would rob you!' Véronique exclaimed. 'If I were you I would send for the police.'

Lazare, too, began to speak about sending her to prison, provoked as he was by the demeanour of the girl, who perked herself up like a young viper whose tail had been trodden upon. He felt inclined to smack her.

'Hand back the money that was given to you!' he cried. 'Where is it?'

The child had already raised the coin to her lips in order to swallow it, when Pauline set her free, saying:

'Well, you may keep it this time, but you can tell them at home that it is the last they will get. In future I shall come myself to see what you are in need of. Now, be off with you!'

They could hear the girl's naked feet splashing through the puddles, and then all became silent. Véronique pushed the bench aside and stooped down to sponge away the pools of water that had trickled from the children's rags. Her kitchen was in a fine state, she grumbled; it reeked of all that filth to such a degree that she would have to keep all the windows and doors open. Pauline, who seemed very grave, gathered up her money and drugs without saying a word, while Lazare, with an air of disgust and ennui, went out to wash his hands at the yard tap.

It was great grief to Pauline to see that her cousin took but little interest in her young friends from the village. Though he was willing to help her on the Saturday afternoons, it was only out of mere complaisance; his heart was not in the work. Whereas neither poverty nor vice repelled her, their hideousness depressed and annoyed Lazare. She could remain cheerful and tranquil in her love for others, whereas he could not cease to think of himself without finding fresh reasons for gloomy broodings. Little by little, those disorderly, ill-behaved children, in whom all the sins of grown-up men and women were already fermenting, began to cause him real suffering. The sight of them proved like an additional blight to his existence, and when he left them he felt hopeless, weary, full of hatred and disgust of the human species. The hours that were spent in good works only hardened him, made him deny the utility of almsgiving and jeer at charity. He protested that it would be far more sensible to crush that nest of pernicious vermin under foot than to help the young ones to grow up. Pauline listened to this, surprised by his violence, and pained to find how different were their views.

That Saturday, when they were alone again, the young man revealed all his suffering by a single remark.

'I feel as though I had just come out of a sewer,' said he. Then he added: 'How can you care for such horrible monsters?'

'I care for them for their own good and not for mine,' the girl replied. 'You yourself would pick up a mangy dog in the road.'

Lazare made a gesture of protest. 'A dog isn't a man,' he said.

'To help for the sake of helping, is not that something?' Pauline resumed. 'It is vexing that they don't improve in conduct, for, if they did, perhaps they would suffer less. But I am content when they have got food and warmth; that is one trouble less for them, at any rate. Why should you want them to recompense us for what we do for them?'

Then she concluded sadly:

'My poor boy, I see that all this only bores you, and it will be better for you not to come and help me in future. I don't want to harden your heart and make you more uncharitable than you already are.'

Thus Lazare eluded all her attempts, and she felt heart-broken at finding how utterly powerless she was to free him from his fear and ennui. When she saw him so nervous and despondent, she could scarcely believe that it was the result merely of his secret trouble; she imagined there must be other causes for his sadness, and the idea of Louise recurred to her. She felt sure that he must still be thinking about the girl, and suffered from not seeing her. A cold chill came upon her at this thought, and she tried to recover her old feeling of proud self-sacrifice, telling herself that she was quite capable of spreading sufficient brightness and joy about her to make them all happy.

One evening Lazare made a remark that hurt her cruelly.

'How lonely it is here!' he said, with a yawn.

She looked at him. Had he got Louise in his mind? But she had not the courage to question him. Her kindliness struggled within her, and life became a torture again.

There was another shock awaiting Lazare. His old dog, Matthew, was far from well. The poor animal, who had completed his fourteenth year in the previous March, was getting more and more paralysed in his hind-quarters. His attacks left him so stiff that he could scarcely crawl along; and he would lie out in the yard, stretching himself in the sun, and watching the members of the family with his melancholy eyes. It was the old dog's eyes, now dimmed by a bluish cloudiness, blank like those of a blind man, that especially wrought upon Lazare's feelings. The poor animal, however, could still see, and used to drag himself along, lay his big head on his master's knee, and look up at him fixedly with a sad expression that seemed to say that he understood all. His beauty had departed. His curly white coat had turned yellowish, and his nose, once so black, was becoming white. His dirtiness, and a kind of expression of shame that hung about him—for they dared not wash him any more on account of his great age—rendered him yet more pitiable. All his playfulness had vanished; he never now rolled on his back, or circled round after his tail, or showed any impulses of pity for Minouche's kittens when Véronique carried them off to drown in the sea. He now spent his days in drowsing like an old man, and he had so much difficulty in getting up on his legs again, and dragged his poor soft feet so heavily, that often one of the household, moved to pity at the sight, stooped to support him for a moment or two in order that he might be able to walk a little.

He grew weaker every day from loss of blood. They had sent for a veterinary surgeon, who burst out laughing on seeing him. What! were they making a fuss about a dog like that? The best thing they could do was to put him out of the way at once. It was all very well to try and keep a human being alive as long as possible, but what was the good of allowing a dying animal to linger on in pain? At this they quickly bustled the vet. out of the house, after paying him his fee of six francs.

One Saturday Matthew lost so much blood that it was found necessary to shut him up in the coach-house. A stream of big red drops trickled after him. Doctor Cazenove, who bad arrived rather early, offered to go and see the dog, who was treated quite as a member of the family. They found him lying down, in a state of great weakness, but with his head raised very high, and the light of life still shining in his eyes. The Doctor made a long examination of him, with all the care and thoughtfulness which he displayed at the bedside of his human patients. At last he said:

'That abundant loss of blood denotes a cancerous degeneration of the kidneys. There is no hope for him, but he may linger for a few days yet, unless some sudden hæmorrhage carries him off.'

Matthew's hopeless condition threw a gloom over the dinner-table. They recalled how fond Madame Chanteau had been of him, all the wild romps of his youth, the dogs he had worried, the cutlets he had stolen off the gridiron, and the eggs that he gobbled up warm from the nest. But at dessert, when Abbé Horteur brought out his pipe, they grew lively again and listened with attention to the priest as he told them about his pear-trees, which promised to do splendidly that year. Chanteau, notwithstanding certain prickings which foreboded another attack of gout, finished off by singing one of the merry songs of his youth. Thus the evening passed away delightfully, and even Lazare himself grew cheerful.

About nine o'clock, just as tea was being served, Pauline suddenly cried out:

'Oh look! There's poor Matthew!'

And, in truth, the poor dog, all bleeding and shrunken, was dragging himself on his tottering legs into the dining-room. Then immediately afterwards they heard Véronique, who was rushing after him with a cloth. She burst into the room, crying:

'I had to go into the coach-house, and he made his escape. He still insists upon being where the rest of us are, and one can't take a step without finding him between one's legs. Come! come! you can't stop here.'

The dog lowered his old trembling head with an expression of affectionate entreaty.

'Oh! let him stop, do!' Pauline cried.

But the servant seemed displeased.

'No! indeed, not in such a state as that. I have had quite enough to do, as it is, with wiping up after him. It's really quite disgusting. You'll have the dining-room in a nice state if he goes dragging himself all over the place in this way. Come along! Come along! Be a little quicker, do!'

'Let him stay here, and you go away!' said Lazare.

Then, as Véronique furiously banged the door behind her, Matthew, who seemed to understand the situation perfectly well, came and laid his head on his master's knee. Everyone wanted to lavish dainties on him; they broke up lumps of sugar, and tried to brighten him up into liveliness. In times past they had been accustomed every evening to amuse themselves by placing a lump of sugar upon the table on the opposite side to that at which the dog was stationed, and then as Matthew ran round they caught up the sugar and deposited it on the other side, in such wise that the dog went rushing round the table in pursuit of the dainty which was ever being removed from him, till at last he grew quite dizzy with the perpetual flitting, and broke out into wild and noisy barking. Lazare tried to set this little game going again, in the hope of cheering the poor animal. Matthew wagged his tail for a moment, went once round the table, and then staggered and fell against Pauline's chair. He could not see the sugar, and his poor shrunken body rolled over on its side. Chanteau had stopped humming, and everyone felt keen sorrow at the sight of that poor dying dog, who had vainly tried to summon up the romping energies of the past.

'Don't do anything to tire him,' the Doctor said gently, 'or you will kill him.'

Then the priest, who was smoking in silence, let fall a remark which was probably intended to account for his emotion.

'One might almost imagine,' he said, 'that these big dogs were human beings.'

About ten o'clock, when the priest and the Doctor had left, Lazare, before going to his own room, went to lock Matthew in the coach-house again. He laid him carefully down upon some fresh straw, and saw that his bowl was full of water; then he kissed him and was about to leave him, but the dog raised himself on his feet with a painful effort, and tried to follow the young man. Lazare, had to put him back three times, and then at last the dog yielded, but he raised his head with so sad an expression to watch his master depart that Lazare, who felt heart-broken, came back and kissed him again.

When he reached his room at the top of the house the young man tried to read till midnight. Then he went to bed. But he could not sleep; his mind dwelt continually upon Matthew; the image of the poor animal, lying on his bed of straw, with his failing eyes turned towards the door, never ceased to haunt him. On the morrow, he thought, Matthew would be dead. Every minute he caught himself involuntarily sitting up in bed and listening, fancying he heard a bark in the yard. His straining ears caught all sorts of imaginary sounds. About two o'clock in the morning he heard a groaning which made him jump out of bed. Who could be groaning like that? He rushed out on to the landing, but the house was wrapped in darkness and silence, not a breath came from Pauline's room. Then he could no longer resist his impulse to go downstairs. The hope of once more seeing his old dog alive made him hasten his steps; he scarcely gave himself time to thrust his legs into a pair of trousers, before he started off, taking his candle with him.

When he reached the coach-house Matthew was no longer lying on the straw; he had dragged himself some distance away from it, and was stretched upon the hard ground. When he saw his master enter, he no longer had enough strength to raise his head. Lazare placed his candle on some old boards, and was filled with astonishment when he bent down and saw the ground all black. Then a spasm of pain came to him as he knelt and found that the poor animal was weltering in his death-throes in a perfect pool of blood. Life was quickly ebbing from him; he wagged his tail very feebly, while a faint light glistened in the depths of his eyes.

'Oh! my poor old dog!' sobbed Lazare; 'oh! my poor old dog!'

Then, aloud, he said:

'Wait a moment! I will move you. Ah! I'm afraid it hurts you, but you are drenched lying here; and I haven't even got a sponge. Would you like something to drink?'

Matthew still gazed at him earnestly. Gradually the death-rattle shook his sides, and the pool of blood grew bigger and bigger, quite silently, and as though it were fed by some hidden spring.

Various ladders and broken barrels in the coach-house cast great shadows around, and the candle burnt very dimly. But suddenly there came a rustling among the straw. It was the cat, Minouche, who was reposing on the bed made for Matthew, and had been disturbed by the light.

'Would you like something to drink, my poor old fellow?' Lazare repeated.

He had found a cloth, which he dipped in the pan of water and pressed against the dying animal's mouth. It seemed to relieve him; and his nose, which was excoriated through fever, became a little cooler. Half an hour passed, during which Lazare constantly dipped the cloth in the water, while his eyes filled with tears at the painful sight before him, and his heart ached with all the bitterness of grief. Wild hopes came to him at times, as they do to the watchers at a bedside; perhaps, he thought, he might recall ebbing life by that simple application of cold water.

'Ah! what is the matter? What do you want to do?' he cried suddenly. 'You want to get on your feet, eh?'

Matthew, shaken by a fit of shivering, made desperate efforts to raise himself. He stiffened his limbs, while his neck was distended by his hiccoughs. But the end was close at hand, and he fell across his master's knees, with eyes still straining from beneath their heavy lids to catch sight of him. Quite overcome by that glance, so full of intelligence, Lazare held Matthew there on his knees, while the animal's big body, heavy like that of a man, was racked by a human-like death-agony in his sorrowing embrace. It lasted for some minutes, and then Lazare saw real tears—heavy tears—roll down from the dog's mournful eyes, while his tongue showed forth from his convulsed mouth, as though for a last caress.

'Oh! my poor old dog!' cried Lazare, bursting into sobs.

Matthew was dead. A little bloody foam frothed round his jaws. As Lazare laid him down on the floor he looked as though he were asleep.

Then once more the young man felt that all was over. His dog was dead now, and this filled him with unreasonable grief and seemed to cast a gloom over his whole life. That death awoke in him the memory of other deaths, and he had not felt more heart-broken even when walking through the yard behind his mother's coffin. Some last portion of her seemed to be torn away from him; she had gone from him now entirely. The recollection of his months of secret anguish, of his nights disturbed by nightmare visions, of his walks to the little graveyard, and of all his terror at the thought of annihilation, surged up in his mind.

However, he heard a sound, and when he turned he saw Minouche quietly making her toilet on the straw. But the door creaked, and Pauline then entered the coach-house, impelled thither by an impulse similar to that of her cousin. When he saw her his tears fell faster, and he who had carefully concealed all his grief at his mother's death, as though it had been some shameful folly, now cried:

'Oh, God! God! She loved him so dearly! You remember, don't you? She first had him when he was quite a tiny little thing, and it was she who always fed him, and he used to follow her all over the house!'

Then he added;

'There is no one left now, and we are utterly alone!'

Tears sprang up in Pauline's eyes. She had stooped to look at poor Matthew's body lying there beneath the dim glimmer of the candle. And she did not seek to console Lazare. She made but a gesture of despair, for she felt that she was utterly powerless.

VIII

It was ennui that lay below all Lazare's gloomy sadness, a heavy continuous ennui which rose from everything, like murky waters from some poisoned spring. He was bored both with work and with idleness, and with himself even more than with others. However, he took himself to task for his idleness and felt ashamed of it. It was disgraceful for a man of his age to waste the best years of his life in such a hole as Bonneville. Until now he had had some excuse for doing so, but at present there was no longer anything to keep him at home, and he despised himself for staying there, leading a useless existence, living upon his family, who were scarcely able to keep themselves. He told himself that he ought to be making a fortune for them, and that he was failing shamefully in not doing so, as he had formerly sworn he would. Great schemes for the future, grand enterprises, the idea of a vast fortune acquired by some brilliant stroke of genius, still occurred to him; but when he rose up from his reveries he lacked the energy to turn his thoughts into action.

'I can't go on like this,' he often said to Pauline. 'I must really do something. I should like to start a newspaper at Caen.'

And his cousin always made the same reply:

'Wait till the time of mourning is over. There is no hurry. You had better think matters well over before you launch out into an undertaking like that.'

The truth was that, notwithstanding her desire to see him occupy himself with some kind of work, she was alarmed by this scheme of founding a newspaper. Another failure, she feared, might kill him, and she thought of all his many previous ones—music, medicine, the sea-weed works; everything, in fact, that he had ever taken in hand. And, besides, a couple of hours after he had mentioned this last plan to her he had refused even to write a letter, on the ground that he was too tired.

The weeks passed away, and another flood-tide carried off three more houses at Bonneville. When the fishermen now met Lazare they asked him if he had had enough of it. Though it was really quite useless trying to do anything, they said it grieved them to see so much good timber lost. There was a touch of banter in their expressions of condolence and in the manner in which they besought him not to leave the place to the waves, as though with their sailor-natures they felt a savage pride in the sea's destructive blows. By degrees Lazare grew so annoyed with their remarks that he avoided passing through the village. The sight of the ruined piles and stockades in the distance became intolerable to him.

One day, as he was on his way to see the priest, Prouane stopped him.

'Monsieur Lazare,' he said obsequiously, while a mischievous smile played round his eyes, 'you know those pieces of timber which are rotting away down yonder on the shore?'

'Well, what about them?'

'If you're not going to use them again, you might give them to us. They would serve, at any rate, as firewood.'

The young man was carried away by his anger, and, without even thinking of what he was saying, he answered sharply:

'That's quite impossible. I am going to set men to work again next week.'

At this all the neighbourhood shouted. They were going to have all the fun over again, since young Chanteau was showing himself so pig-headed. A fortnight went by, and the fishermen never met Lazare without asking him if he was unable to find workmen; and thus he was goaded into a renewal of his operations, being induced thereto, also, by the entreaties of his cousin, who was anxious that he should have some occupation which would keep him near her. But he entered into the matter without the least spark of enthusiasm, and it was only his revengeful enmity against the sea which kept him saying that he was quite certain to triumph over it this time, and would make it lick the pebbles on the shore as submissively as a dog.

Once again Lazare set to work preparing plans. He planned fresh angles of resistance and doubled the strength of his supports. No excessive expense was going to be incurred, as most of the old timbers could be used again. The carpenter sent in an estimate of four thousand francs; and, as the sum was so small, Lazare made no objection to Louise advancing it, being quite certain, he said, of getting a subvention from the General Council; indeed, he remarked that this was the only means they had of getting their previous expenditure reimbursed, for the Council would certainly refuse to advance a copper so long as the works remained in their present ruinous condition. This consideration seemed to infuse a little warmth into his proceedings, and the operations were pressed on. In other ways, too, he became very busy, and went over to Caen every week to see the Prefect and the influential members of the Council.

While the piles were being laid, an intimation was received that an engineer would be sent to inspect the operations and make a report, on the receipt of which the Council would vote a subvention. The engineer spent a whole day at Bonneville. He was a very pleasant man, and gladly accepted an invitation from the Chanteaus to lunch with them after his visit to the shore. They refrained from making any reference to the subvention, as they were unwilling to appear in any way desirous of influencing his judgment, but he showed himself so polite and attentive to Pauline at table that she began to feel no doubt as to their success in obtaining the grant. And so, a fortnight later, when Lazare returned from one of his visits to Caen, the whole house was thrown into amazement and consternation by the news which he brought back with him. He was bursting with anger. Would they believe it! That silly fop of an engineer had sent in a simply disgraceful report. Yes! he had been polite and civil, but he had made fun of every single piece of timber with a ridiculous lavishness of technical terms. But it was only what they might have expected, for those official gentlemen didn't believe that any one could put even a rabbit-hutch together without their advice and assistance! However, the worst of the matter was that the Council, after reading the report, had refused to vote any grant at all.

This blow was a source of fresh despondency to the young man. The works were finished, and he swore that they would resist the heaviest tides, and that the whole Engineering Department would go wild with angry jealousy when they saw them. All this, however, would not repay Pauline the money that she had advanced, and Lazare bitterly reproached himself for having led her into that loss. She herself, however, rising victorious over the instincts of her economical nature, claimed the entire responsibility for the course she had taken, impressing upon him that it was she who had insisted upon making the advances. The money had gone in a charitable purpose, she said, and she did not regret a sou of it, but would have gladly given more for the sake of saving the unhappy village. However, when the carpenter sent in his bill, she could not suppress a gesture of grievous astonishment. The four thousand francs of the estimate had grown to nearly eight thousand. Altogether, those piles and stockades, which the first storm might completely sweep away, had cost her more than twenty thousand francs.

By this time Pauline's fortune was reduced to forty thousand francs, which produced a yearly income of two thousand francs, a sum on which she would be barely able to live, should she ever find herself homeless and friendless. Her money had trickled away in small sums in the household expenses, which she still continued to defray. But she now began to exercise a strict supervision over all the outlay of the house. The Chanteaus themselves no longer had even their three hundred francs a month, for, after Madame Chanteau's death, it was found that a certain amount of stock had been sold without there being any clue as to how the amount realised by its sale had been applied. When her own income was added to that of the family, Pauline had little more than four hundred francs a month with which to keep the house going. The expenses of the establishment were heavy, and she had to perform miracles of economy in order to save the money that she needed for her charities. Doctor Cazenove's trusteeship had terminated during the winter, and Pauline, being now of age, her money and herself were entirely at her own disposal; though indeed the Doctor during the term of his authority had never refused to let her have her own way. That authority had legally ceased for some weeks before either of them remembered the fact. But, although Pauline had been practically her own mistress for some time, she felt more thoroughly independent, more like a fully-grown woman, now that she was the uncontrolled mistress of the house, with no accounts to render to anybody, for her uncle was ever entreating her to settle everything, and Lazare, like his father, also hated having anything to do with money matters.

Thus Pauline held the common purse and stepped entirely into her aunt's place, performing her duties as mistress of the house with a practical common-sense that sometimes quite amazed the two men. It was only Véronique who made any complaints, thinking that Mademoiselle Pauline was very stingy, and grumbling at being restricted to a single pound of butter a week.

The days succeeded each other with monotonous regularity. The perpetual sameness, the unvarying habits of the household, which constituted Pauline's happiness, only tended to increase Lazare's feeling of ennui. Never had the house affected him with such uneasy disquietude as now, when every room seemed basking in cheerful peace. The completion of the operations on the shore had proved a great relief, for enforced attention to anything had become intolerable to him, and he had no sooner fallen back into idleness than he once more became the prey of shame and anxiety. Every morning he made a fresh set of plans for the future. He had abandoned the idea of starting a newspaper as unworthy of him, and he inveighed against the poverty which prevented him from quietly devoting himself to some great literary work. He had lately become enamoured of the notion of preparing himself for a professorship, and so earning a livelihood and enabling himself to carry out his literary ambition. There no longer seemed to exist between himself and Pauline anything beyond their old feeling of comradeship, a quiet affection which made them, as it were, brother and sister. The young man never made any reference to their marriage, either because he never thought of it, or, perhaps, because he took it for granted and considered any discussion of the matter unnecessary; while the girl herself was equally reticent on the subject, feeling quite certain that her cousin would willingly acquiesce in the first suggestion of their union. And yet Lazare's passion for her was gradually diminishing; a fact of which she was quite conscious, though she did not understand that it was this alone which rendered her powerless to free him from his ennui.

One evening, when she had gone upstairs in the dusk to tell him that dinner was ready, she surprised him in the act of hastily hiding something which she could not distinguish.

'What's that?' she asked, with a laugh. 'Some verses for my birthday?'

'No!' he replied, with much emotion and in wavering tones. 'It's nothing at all.'

It was an old glove which Louise had left behind her, and which he had just discovered behind a pile of books. The glove had retained a strong odour of the original skin of which it was made, and this was softened to a musky fragrance by Louise's favourite perfume, heliotrope. Lazare, who was very susceptible to the influence of odours, was violently agitated by that scent, and in a state of emotion had lingered with the glove pressed to his lips, draining from it a draught of sweet recollections.

From that day onward he began to yearn for Louise over the yawning chasm which his mother's death had left within him. He had never indeed forgotten the girl; her image had been dimmed somewhat by his grief, but it only wanted that little thing that had once belonged to her to bring her back to his mind. He took up the glove again, as soon as he was alone, kissed it, inhaled its scent, and fancied that he was still holding the girl in his embrace with his lips seeking hers. His nervous excitement, the mental feverishness which resulted from his long-continued inactivity, tended to intensify this species of intoxication. He felt vexed with himself on account of it, but he succumbed to it again and again, carried away by a passion which quite overpowered him. All this, too, increased his gloomy moodiness, and he even began to get snappish and surly with his cousin, as though she were in some way to blame for his passionate trances. Often, in the midst of some tranquil conversation, he would suddenly rush off and shut himself up in his room and wallow in his passionate recollections of the other girl. Then he would come downstairs again, weary and disgusted with life.

At the end of a month he had so completely changed that Pauline grew quite hopeless and spent nights of torment. In the daytime she forced herself to assume a brave face, and kept herself perpetually busy in the house of which she was now the mistress. But at night, when she had closed the door of her room behind her, she dwelt upon her troubles, gave way completely, and wept like a child. She had no hope left; all her kindliness only met with an increasingly chilling reception. Could it really be, she wondered, that kindness and affection were insufficient, and that it was possible to love a person and yet cause him unhappiness? For she saw that her cousin was really unhappy, and she began to fear that it might somehow be her own fault. And then, beneath her doubts of herself, there lurked increasing fears of a rival influence. She had for a long time explained Lazare's gloomy moodiness to herself as springing from grief at his mother's death; but now she was again haunted by the idea of Louise, an idea which had occurred to her on the very day after Madame Chanteau's death, but which she had then scornfully dismissed amidst her pride in the power of her own affection, though every night now it forced itself upon her as she found the efforts of her love so unavailing.

The girl was haunted by it all. As soon as she had put down her candle after entering her room she threw herself upon her bed, without having the energy to undress. All the gaiety of spirit which she had shown during the day, all her calmness and restraint, weighed upon her like a too heavy gown. The day, like those which had preceded it, and like those which would follow, had passed away amidst that feeling of hopelessness with which Lazare's moody ennui contaminated the whole house. What was the use of striving to appear bright and cheerful, when she was unable to cast a gleam of sunshine on him she so dearly loved? Lazare's former cruel remark still rankled in her heart. They were too lonely, and it was her jealousy that was to blame for it; it was she who had sent their friends away. She would not name Louise to herself, and she tried not to think about her; but she could not succeed in banishing the memory of that girl, with the winning ways and coquettish airs which had amused Lazare, who grew bright at the mere rustling of her gown. The minutes glided on, and still Pauline could not drive Louise from her thoughts. She felt sure it was for her that Lazare was anxiously longing, that all that was wanted to set him right again was to send for the girl. And every evening when Pauline went upstairs and threw herself wearily on her bed she relapsed into those same thoughts and visions, and was tortured by the idea that the happiness of her dear ones depended perhaps upon another than herself.

Now and then her spirit would rise within her in rebellion, and she would spring from her bed, rush to the window and open it, feeling suffocated. And there, gazing out into the far-spreading darkness, above the ocean, whose moaning rose to her ear, she would remain for hours, leaning on her elbows, unable to sleep, while the sea-air played upon her burning breast. No; never could she be vile enough, she told herself, to tolerate that girl's return! Had she not surprised them together? Was it not an act of treason—treason of the basest kind—that they had committed? Yes; it was an unpardonable offence, and she would only be making herself their accomplice if she did anything to bring them together again. She grew feverish and excited with angry jealousy at the ideas which she called up, and shook with sobs as she hid her face with her bare arms. The night sped on, and the breezes fanned her neck and played with her hair without calming the angry pulsing of her blood. But even in those moments when indignation most mastered her, her natural kindliness still made its voice heard and struggled against her passion. It whispered to her in gentle tones of the blessedness of charity, of the sweetness of sacrificing one's self for others. She tried to hush that inner voice, telling herself that to carry self-sacrifice to the point of baseness was idiotic; but she still heard its pleading, which refused to be silenced. By degrees she grew to recognise it as the voice of her own better nature, and she began to ask herself what, after all, would suffering matter, if she could only secure the happiness of those who were dear to her? Then she sobbed less loudly as she listened to the moans of the sea ascending through the darkness, weary and ill the while, and not yet conquered.

One night, after long weeping at her window, she at last got into bed. As soon as she had blown out her candle and lay staring into the darkness she came to a sudden resolution. The very first thing in the morning she would get her uncle to write to Louise and invite her to stay at Bonneville for a month. It all seemed quite natural and easy to her just then, and she quickly fell into sound sleep, a deeper and calmer sleep than she had known for weeks. But when she came down to breakfast the next morning and saw herself sitting between her uncle and cousin at the family table, there came a sudden choking sensation in her throat, and she felt all her courage and resolution forsaking her.

'You are eating nothing,' said Chanteau. 'What's the matter with you?'

'Nothing at all,' she replied. 'On the contrary, I have had a remarkably good sleep.'

The mere sight of Lazare brought her back to her mental struggle. He was eating in silence, weary already of the new day that had begun, and the girl could not bring herself to yield him to another. The thought of another taking him from her, and kissing, him to console and comfort him, was intolerable to her. Yet when he left the room she made an effort to carry out her resolution.

'Are your hands any worse to-day?' she asked her uncle.

He gazed at his hands, where tophus was again appearing, and he painfully bent the joints.

'No,' he answered. 'My right hand is even more supple than usual. If the priest comes, we'll have a game at draughts.'

Then, after a moment's silence, he added:

'What makes you ask?'

She had been hoping that he would not be able to write, and now she blushed deeply, and, like a coward, determined to defer the letter till the morrow.

'Oh! I only wanted to know!' she stammered.

From that day forward all rest deserted her. Up in her own room at nights, after her fits of tears, she used to gain the mastery over herself, and vow that she would dictate to her uncle a letter in the morning; but when the morning came, and she again joined in the family life amongst those she loved, all her resolution failed her. The most trivial little details sent a pang through her heart; the bread that she cut for her cousin, his shoes which she gave to Véronique to be cleaned, and all the petty incidents of the daily routine. They might surely still be very happy by themselves in their old way, she thought. What was the use of calling in a stranger? Why disturb the affectionate life which they had been living for so many years past? The thought that it would no longer be she herself who would cut the bread and mend the linen made her choke with grief, as if she saw all happiness crumble away. This torture, which lurked in every little homely detail of her work, made all her duties as mistress a torment.

'What can be wrong?' she would sometimes ask herself aloud. 'We love each other, and yet we are not happy. Our affection for each other only seems to make us wretched.'

It was a problem she was constantly trying to solve. Perhaps all the trouble arose from the fact that her own character and that of her cousin did not harmonize. But, though she would willingly have adapted herself, have abdicated all personal will, she found it impossible to do so, for her sense of reason prevented her. Her patience often gave way, and there were days of sulking. She would have liked to be merry and drown all petty wretchedness in gaiety, but she could no longer do so; she, in her turn, was growing moody and despondent.

'It's very nice and pleasant this!' Véronique began to repeat from morning till night. 'There are only three of you now, and you'll end by eating each other up! Madame used to have her bad days, but, at any rate, while she was alive, you managed to keep off banging things at each other's heads.'

Chanteau himself also began to suffer from the influence of this slow and, to him, inexplicable disintegration of the family affections. Whenever he now had an attack of the gout, he bellowed, as the servant said, more loudly than before, and his caprices and violence tormented everyone in the place. The whole house was becoming a hell once more.

At last Pauline, in the last throes of her jealousy, began to ask herself if she was to impose her own ideas of happiness on Lazare. Certainly before everything else it was his happiness that she desired, even at the cost of grief to herself. Why, then, should she go on keeping him in this seclusion, in a solitude which seemed to make him suffer? He must, and doubtless he did, still love her, and he would come back to her when he was better able to appreciate her after comparison with that other girl. But, any way, she ought to let him make his own choice. It was only just, and the idea of justice remained paramount within her.

Every three months Pauline repaired to Caen to receive the dividends. She started in the morning and returned in the evening, after attending to a list of purchases and errands which she compiled during the previous quarter. On her visit to Caen in June that year, however, the family vainly awaited her return, putting off dinner till nine o'clock. Chanteau, who had become very uneasy, sent Lazare off along the road, fearing that some accident had occurred; whereas Véronique, with an air of perfect tranquillity, said that it was foolish of them to distress themselves, for Mademoiselle Pauline, finding herself behindhand, and being anxious to complete her purchases, had doubtless determined to stay at Caen all night. Nevertheless, they spent a very uneasy time at Bonneville, and next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, their anxiety returned. About noon, when Chanteau could scarcely keep himself any longer in his chair, and Lazare had just determined to set off to Arromanches, Véronique, who had been standing on the road, suddenly rushed into the room exclaiming:

'Here she is! Mademoiselle is coming!'

Chanteau insisted upon having his chair wheeled on to the terrace, and the father and son waited there together, while Véronique gave them particulars of what she had seen.

'It was Malivoire's coach. I could tell it was Mademoiselle Pauline by her crape ribbons. But what I couldn't understand was that there seemed to be somebody with her. What can that broken-winded old hack be doing, I wonder?'

At last the coach drove up to the door. Lazare had stepped towards it, and had already opened his mouth to question Pauline, who had sprung down lightly, when he remained as if thunderstruck. Behind his cousin there appeared another young woman, dressed in striped lilac silk. Both girls were laughing together in the most friendly fashion. The young man's surprise was so great that he returned to his father, crying:

'She has brought Louise with her!'

'Louise! Ah, that's a capital idea!' Chanteau exclaimed.

And when the girls stood side by side before him, the one still in her deep mourning and the other in her gay summer toilette, he continued, delighted with this new distraction:

'Ah, so you have made peace! Well, I never quite understood what was the matter—some nonsense, I suppose. How naughty it was of you, my poor Louisette, to keep estranged from us during all the trouble we've been through! Well! it's all at an end now, eh?'

A feeling of embarrassment kept the girls silent. They blushed and avoided looking at each other. Then Louise stepped forward and kissed Chanteau to hide her confusion. But he wanted some explanations.

'You met each other, I suppose.'

Thereupon Louise turned towards her friend, while her eyes filled with tears.

'It was Pauline who came to see us. I was just going back into the house myself when she arrived. You mustn't scold her for staying the night with us, for it was my fault. I made her stay. And, as the telegraph goes no further than Arromanches, we thought we should get here ourselves as soon as any message. Do you forgive me?'

She kissed Chanteau again with all her old caressing manner. He inquired no further. When what happened contributed to his pleasure, he had no fault to find with it.

'But there's Lazare,' he added; 'aren't you going to speak to him?'

The young man had kept in the background, with an embarrassed smile on his face. His father's remark completed his confusion, the more especially as Louise only blushed again and made no step towards him. Why was she there, he asked himself? Why had his cousin brought back this rival, whom she had so violently driven away? He had not yet recovered from his confusion at the sight of her.

'Kiss her, Lazare!' said Pauline softly, 'since she is too timid to kiss you.'

Her face was quite white, as she stood there in her deep mourning, but her expression was perfectly peaceful, and her eyes clear and untroubled. She looked at them both with the maternal, serious expression which she assumed in her graver moments of household responsibility, and only smiled when the young man took courage to let his lips just touch the cheek which Louise offered him.

When Véronique saw this, she rushed away and shut herself up in her kitchen, perfectly thunderstruck. It was altogether beyond her comprehension. After all that had passed, Mademoiselle Pauline could have very little heart. She was becoming quite ridiculous in her desire to please others. It wasn't sufficient to bring all the dirty little drabs of the neighbourhood into the house and put them in the way of walking off with the silver, but now she must bring sweethearts for Monsieur Lazare! The house was getting into a nice state indeed!

When she had vented a little of her indignation in this explosion over her fire, she went out on to the terrace again, exclaiming, 'Don't you know that lunch has been ready for more than an hour? The potatoes are fried to cinders!'

They all ate with good appetites, but Chanteau was the only one whose mirth flowed freely, and fortunately he was too gay to notice the persistent constraint of the others. Though they showed themselves very affectionate, still, beneath it all, there lurked a touch of that uneasy sadness which manifests itself in one who forgives an irreparable insult, but cannot altogether forget it. The afternoon was spent in installing the newcomer in her room. She again occupied her old quarters on the first floor. If Madame Chanteau could only have come downstairs to dinner, with her quick, short step, nothing would have appeared changed in the house.

For nearly a week longer this uneasy constraint lasted amongst the young people. Lazare, who did not dare to question Pauline, was altogether unable to understand what he considered her most extraordinary caprice; for any idea of a sacrifice, of a determination deliberately and magnanimously taken, never occurred to him. He himself, amidst the desires fanned by his listless idleness, had never thought of marrying Louise; and so now, on being all three placed together again, they found themselves in a false position, which caused them much distress. There were pauses of silent embarrassment, and sentences that remained half unspoken from fear of conveying any allusion to the past. Pauline, surprised at this unexpected state of affairs, was obliged to exaggerate and force her gaiety, in the hope of bringing back a semblance of the careless merriment of former days. At first she felt a wave of joy rising in her heart, for she thought that Lazare was coming back to her. The presence of Louise had calmed him; he almost avoided her, and shunned being alone with her, horrified at the thought that he might even yet be weak enough to betray his cousin's confidence. Tortured by a feverish affection for Pauline, he attached himself to her, and in tones of emotion proclaimed her to be the best of girls, a true saint, of whom he was utterly unworthy. And so she felt very happy, and rejoiced greatly in what she thought was her victory, when she saw her cousin pay such little attention to Louise. At the end of the week she even began to reproach him for his want of amiability towards her rival.

'Why do you always run off and leave us? It really quite vexes me. She isn't here for us to be rude to her.'