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:

'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: