a pause, making all the surrounding grief his own.
As soon as he recognized the Froments he also spoke the words which came from every tongue: “What a frightful misfortune, an only son!”
Then he pressed their hands, and whispered and explained that Madame Beauchene, feeling quite exhausted, had withdrawn for a few moments, and that Beauchene and Blaise were making necessary arrangements downstairs. And then, resuming his maniacal perambulations, he pointed towards an adjoining room, the folding doors of which were wide open.
“He is there, on the bed where he died. There are flowers; it looks very nice. You may go in.”
This room was Maurice’s bedchamber. The large curtains had been closely drawn, and tapers were burning near the bed, casting a soft light on the deceased’s face, which appeared very calm, very white, the eyes closed as if in sleep. Between the clasped hands rested a crucifix, and with the roses scattered over the sheet the bed was like a couch of springtide. The odor of the flowers, mingling with that of the burning wax, seemed rather oppressive amid the deep and tragic stillness. Not a breath stirred the tall, erect flames of the tapers, burning in the semiobscurity, amid which the bed alone showed forth.
When Mathieu and Marianne had gone in, they perceived their daughter-in-law, Charlotte, behind a screen near the door. Lighted by a little lamp, she sat there with a sketching-block on her knees, making a drawing of Maurice’s head as it rested among the roses. Hard and anguish-bringing as was such work for one with so young a heart, she had nevertheless yielded to the mother’s ardent entreaties. And for three hours past, pale, looking wondrously beautiful, her face showing all the flower of youth, her blue eyes opening widely under her fine golden hair, she had been there diligently working, striving to do her best. When Mathieu and Marianne approached her she would not speak, but simply nodded. Still a little color came to her cheeks, and her eyes smiled. And when the others, after lingering there for a moment in sorrowful contemplation, had quietly returned to the drawingroom, she resumed her work alone, in the presence of the dead, among the roses and the tapers.
Morange was still walking the drawingroom like a lost, wandering phantom. Mathieu remained standing there, while Marianne sat down near the folding doors. Not another word was exchanged; the spell of waiting continued amid the oppressive silence of the dim, closed room. When some ten minutes had elapsed, two other visitors arrived, a lady and a gentleman, whom the Froments could not at first recognize. Morange bowed and received them in his dazed way. Then, as the lady did not release her hold of the gentleman’s hand, but led him along, as if he were blind, between the articles of furniture, so that he might not knock against them, Marianne and Mathieu realized that the new comers were the Angelins.
Since the previous winter they had sold their little house at Janville to fix themselves in Paris, for a last misfortune had befallen them — the failure of a great banking house had carried away almost the whole of their modest fortune. The wife had fortunately secured a post as one of the delegates of the Poor Relief Board, an inspectorship with various duties, such as watching over the mothers and children assisted by the board, and reporting thereon. And she was wont to say, with a sad smile, that this work of looking after the little ones was something of a consolation for her, since it was now certain that she would never have a child of her own. As for her husband, whose eyesight was failing more and more, he had been obliged to relinquish painting altogether, and he dragged out his days in morose desolation, his life wrecked, annihilated.
With short steps, as if she were leading a child, Madame Angelin brought him to an armchair near Marianne and seated him in it. He had retained the lofty mien of a musketeer, but his features had been ravaged by anxiety, and his hair was white, though he was only forty-four years of age. And what memories arose at the sight of that sorrowful lady leading that infirm, aged man, for those who had known the young couple, all tenderness and good looks, rambling along the secluded paths of Janville, amid the careless delights of their love.
As soon as Madame Angelin had clasped Marianne’s hands with her own trembling fingers, she also uttered in low, stammering accents, those despairing words: “Ah! what a frightful misfortune, an only son!”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she would not sit down before going for a moment to see the body in the adjoining room. When she came back, sobbing in her handkerchief, she sank into an armchair between Marianne and her husband. He remained there motionless, staring fixedly with his dim eyes. And silence fell again throughout the lifeless house, whither the rumble of the works, now deserted, fireless and frozen, ascended no longer.
But Beauchene, followed by Blaise, at last made his appearance. The heavy blow he had received seemed to have made him ten years older. It was as if the heavens had suddenly fallen upon him. Never amid his conquering egotism, his pride of strength and his pleasures, had he imagined such a downfall to be possible. Never had he been willing to admit that Maurice might be ill — such an idea was like casting a doubt upon his own strength; he thought himself beyond the reach of thunderbolts; misfortune would never dare to fall on him. And at the first overwhelming moment he had found himself weak as a woman, weary and limp, his strength undermined by his dissolute life, the slow disorganization of his faculties. He had sobbed like a child before his dead son, all his vanity crushed, all his calculations destroyed. The thunderbolt had sped by, and nothing remained. In a minute his life had been swept away; the world was now all black and void. And he remained livid, in consternation at it all, his bloated face swollen with grief, his heavy eyelids red with tears.
When he perceived the Froments, weakness again came upon him, and he staggered towards them with open arms, once more stifling with sobs.
“Ah! my dear friends, what a terrible blow! And I wasn’t here! When I got here he had lost consciousness; he did not recognize me — . Is it possible? A lad who was in such good health! I cannot believe it. It seems to me that I must be dreaming, and that he will get up presently and come down with me into the workshops!”
They kissed him, they pitied him, struck down like this upon his return from some carouse or other, still intoxicated, perhaps, and tumbling into the midst of such an awful disaster, his prostration increased by the stupor following upon debauchery. His beard, moist with his tears, still stank of tobacco and musk.
Although he scarcely knew the Angelins, he pressed them also in his arms. “Ah! my poor friends, what a terrible blow! What a terrible blow!”
Then Blaise in his turn came to kiss his parents. In spite of his grief, and the horrible night he had spent, his face retained its youthful freshness. Yet tears coursed down his cheeks, for, working with Maurice day by day, he had conceived real friendship for him.
The silence fell again. Morange, as if unconscious of what went on around him, as if he were quite alone there, continued walking softly hither and thither like a somnambulist. Beauchene, with haggard mien, went off, and then came back carrying some little address-books. He turned about for another moment, and finally sat down at a writing-table which had been brought out of Maurice’s room. Little accustomed as he was to grief, he instinctively sought to divert his mind, and began searching in the little address-books for the purpose of drawing up a list of the persons who must be invited to the funeral. But his eyes became blurred, and with a gesture he summoned Blaise, who, after going into the bedchamber to glance at his wife’s sketch, was now returning to the drawingroom. Thereupon the young man, standing erect beside the writing-table, began to dictate the names in a low voice; and then, amid the deep silence sounded a low and monotonous murmur.
The minutes slowly went by. The visitors were still waiting for Constance. At last a little door of the death-chamber slowly opened, and she entered that chamber noiselessly, without anybody knowing that she was there. She looked like a spectre emerging out of the darkness into the pale light of the tapers. She had not yet wept; her face was livid, contracted, hardened by cold rage. Her little figure, instead of bending, seemed to
