Chapter 5

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

At first she affected loving anxiety.

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

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

'Has V�ronique found time to give you your marshmallow water?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V�ronique, who was just bringing them their candles, once more put in her word.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he grew calm as she gently explained to him:

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

Then, however, she unfortunately added:

'I have seen you yawning all the morning.'

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

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

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

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

'Take him away with you.'

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

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

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

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

'Oh! be off! You worry me!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'And as for the duchess—'

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

'The duchess? Whom are you talking of?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'No, no! not V�ronique!' Chanteau would cry out, 'she shakes me so!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V�ronique was in a frightfully bad temper.

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

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

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

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

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

'Where are you going?' she asked.

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

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

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

'Oh! you hussy! you hussy!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Be off! be off!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Are you deaf?'

'If I don't answer, it's because I don't choose,' V�ronique cried snappishly, bursting with angry excitement, and rubbing a candlestick violently enough to hurt her fingers. 'She is quite right in going away. If I had been in her place, I would have taken myself off long ago.'

Madame Chanteau listened with gaping lips, quite stupefied by this mutinous outburst of loquacity.

'I'm not talkative,' V�ronique continued, 'but you mustn't press me too far or I shall let out all I think. I should have liked to fling Mademoiselle Pauline into the sea on the day you first brought her here as a little girl, but I can't bear to see anyone ill-treated, and you have all of you treated her so abominably that one of these days I shall give anyone who hurts her a swinging box on the ears. You can give me warning, if you like; I don't care a button; but I will let her into some nice secrets. Yes, she shall know all about how you have treated her, with all your fine pretences to honour and honesty.'

'Hold your tongue! You are quite mad!' cried Madame Chanteau, much disquieted by this fresh explosion.

'No, I will not hold my tongue! It is all too shameful! Shameful, I say! Do you hear me? I have been choking with it all for years and years! Wasn't it bad enough of you to rob her of her money? Couldn't you have been content with that, without tearing her poor little heart to shreds? Oh yes! I know all about it; I have seen through all your underhand plottings. Monsieur Lazare is perhaps not quite so calculating as you are; but in other respects he's not much better than you, for he wouldn't much mind giving her her death-blow out of mere selfishness, just to save himself from feeling bored! Ah, me! there are some people who come into this world only to be preyed upon and devoured by others.'

She flourished the candlestick about, and then caught hold of a pan, which rumbled like a drum under the violent rubbing she gave it. Madame Chanteau had been sorely tempted to turn her out of the house at once, but she succeeded in restraining herself and said to her icily:

'So you won't go up and speak to the girl? It would be for her own good, to prevent her from committing a piece of folly.'

V�ronique became silent again, but at last she growled out:

'I'll go up to her. Reason is reason, after all, and an inconsiderate act never does any good.'

She stayed for a minute or two to wash her hands, and then took off her dirty apron. When she opened the door in the passage to make her way to the stairs a loud wail rushed in. It was the ceaseless heart-rending wail of Chanteau. Madame Chanteau, who was following V�ronique, thereupon seemed struck with an idea, and exclaimed in an undertone, emphasising her words:

'Tell her that she can't think of leaving her uncle in the dreadful state in which he is. Do you hear?'

'Well, he certainly is bellowing hard; there's no doubt of that,' V�ronique replied.

She went up the stairs, while her mistress, who had stretched out her hand towards her husband's room, purposely refrained from closing the door. The sick man's groans ascended the staircase, increasing in volume at every fresh storey. When V�ronique reached Pauline's room she found her just on the point of leaving, having fastened up in a bundle what little linen she would absolutely require, and intending to send old Malivoire to fetch the rest in the morning. She had calmed down again, and, though very pale and low-spirited, was simply obeying the dictates of her reason without any feeling of anger.

'Either she or I,' was the only answer she returned to all that V�ronique said, and she sedulously avoided mentioning Louise's name.

When V�ronique conveyed this reply to Madame Chanteau, she found the latter in Louise's room, where the girl, having dressed herself—for on her side she was determined to go away—stood trembling, alarmed at the slightest creaking of the door. Madame Chanteau was obliged to yield, and sent to Verchemont for the baker's trap, saying that she would take Louise to her Aunt L�onie at Arromanches. They would invent some story to tell this lady; they would make the violence of Chanteau's attack a pretext, alleging that his screams had become quite unendurable.

After the departure of the two ladies, whom Lazare safely seated in the baker's trap, V�ronique shouted in the passage at the top of her voice:

'You can come downstairs now, Mademoiselle Pauline; there is nobody here.'

The house seemed empty; the heavy gloomy silence was broken only by Chanteau's perpetual groans, which became louder and louder. As Pauline came down the last step Lazare, returning to the house from the yard, met her face to face. His whole body shook with a nervous trembling; he paused for a moment, as though anxious to confess his fault and implore forgiveness, but a rush of tears choked his voice, and he hurried up to his own room, without having been able to say a word.

Chanteau was still lying with his head across the bolster and his arm rigidly outstretched. He no longer dared make the slightest movement; doubtless he had not even been aware of Pauline's absence, as he lay there with his eyes closed and his mouth open to yell and groan. None of the sounds of the house reached him; and all he thought of was to complain as long and as loudly as his breath would let him. His cries grew more and more desperate, till they at last seriously disturbed Minouche, who had had a family of four kittens thrown away that morning, and who, already quite forgetful of them, had been purring lazily on an arm-chair.

When Pauline took her place again, her uncle howled so loudly that the cat got up, unable to endure the din. She fixed her eyes steadily on the sick man, with the indignation of a well-behaved person whose serenity is disturbed. If she could not be allowed to purr in peace, it would be impossible for her to stop there. And she took herself off, with her tail in the air.