Chapter 4

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

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

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

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

And after a moment's silence she added rapidly:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he launched out into details of old Bonneville.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Abb� had just crowned a king.

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

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

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

'Here's another, Mademoiselle.'

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

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

'It's Tourmal's girl, isn't it?' asked Pauline of V�ronique.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'V�ronique! V�ronique! Get up! Pauline is dying.'

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

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

He strode up to V�ronique.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At this Lazare burst out angrily:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then, in a burst of impatience, he added:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He turned very pale as he asked:

'Then she is going to die?'

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

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

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

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

Every morning Lazare said to him:

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

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

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

'So medicine is worth nothing?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Why do you say that?' he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Well, V�ronique?' he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lazare suddenly turned towards her.

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

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

'No!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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