it seemed impossible that they should ever know the truth, he fabricated aloud the simplest explanation:
'No doubt your grandmother came in yesterday on her way back from the asylum, to say good day to Uncle Macquart, before he had begun drinking.'
'Let us go away! let us go away!' cried Clotilde. 'I am stifling here; I cannot remain here!'
Pascal, too, wished to go and give information of the death. He went out after her, shut up the house, and put the key in his pocket. Outside, they heard the little yellow dog still howling. He had taken refuge between Charles' legs, and the boy amused himself pushing him with his foot and listening to him whining, without comprehending.
The doctor went at once to the house of M. Maurin, the notary at the Tulettes, who was also mayor of the commune. A widower for ten years past, and living with his daughter, who was a childless widow, he had maintained neighborly relations with old Macquart, and had occasionally kept little Charles with him for several days at a time, his daughter having become interested in the boy who was so handsome and so much to be pitied. M. Maurin, horrified at the news, went at once with the doctor to draw up a statement of the accident, and promised to make out the death certificate in due form. As for religious ceremonies, funeral obsequies, they seemed scarcely possible. When they entered the kitchen the draught from the door scattered the ashes about, and when they piously attempted to collect them again they succeeded only in gathering together the scrapings of the flags, a collection of accumulated dirt, in which there could be but little of Uncle Macquart. What, then, could they bury? It was better to give up the idea. So they gave it up. Besides, Uncle Macquart had been hardly a devout Catholic, and the family contented themselves with causing masses to be said later on for the repose of his soul.
The notary, meantime, had immediately declared that there existed a will, which had been deposited with him, and he asked Pascal to meet him at his house on the next day but one for the reading; for he thought he might tell the doctor at once that Uncle Macquart had chosen him as his executor. And he ended by offering, like a kindhearted man, to keep Charles with him until then, comprehending how greatly the boy, who was so unwelcome at his mother's, would be in the way in the midst of all these occurrences. Charles seemed enchanted, and he remained at the Tulettes.
It was not until very late, until seven o'clock, that Clotilde and Pascal were able to take the train to return to Plassans, after the doctor had at last visited the two patients whom he had to see. But when they returned together to the notary's on the day appointed for the meeting, they had the disagreeable surprise of finding old Mme. Rougon installed there. She had naturally learned of Macquart's death, and had hurried there on the following day, full of excitement, and making a great show of grief; and she had just made her appearance again to-day, having heard the famous testament spoken of. The reading of the will, however, was a simple matter, unmarked by any incident. Macquart had left all the fortune that he could dispose of for the purpose of erecting a superb marble monument to himself, with two angels with folded wings, weeping. It was his own idea, a reminiscence of a similar tomb which he had seen abroad-in Germany, perhaps-when he was a soldier. And he had charged his nephew Pascal to superintend the erection of the monument, as he was the only one of the family, he said, who had any taste.
During the reading of the will Clotilde had remained in the notary's garden, sitting on a bench under the shade of an ancient chestnut tree. When Pascal and Felicite again appeared, there was a moment of great embarrassment, for they had not spoken to one another for some months past. The old lady, however, affected to be perfectly at her ease, making no allusion whatever to the new situation, and giving it to be understood that they might very well meet and appear united before the world, without for that reason entering into an explanation or becoming reconciled. But she committed the mistake of laying too much stress on the great grief which Macquart's death had caused her. Pascal, who suspected the overflowing joy, the unbounded delight which it gave her to think that this family ulcer was to be at last healed, that this abominable uncle was at last out of the way, became gradually possessed by an impatience, an indignation, which he could not control. His eyes fastened themselves involuntarily on his mother's gloves, which were black.
Just then she was expressing her grief in lowered tones:
'But how imprudent it was, at his age, to persist in living alone- like a wolf in his lair! If he had only had a servant in the house with him!'
Then the doctor, hardly conscious of what he was saying, terrified at hearing himself say the words, but impelled by an irresistible force, said:
'But, mother, since you were there, why did you not quench him?'
Old Mme. Rougon turned frightfully pale. How could her son have known? She looked at him for an instant in open-mouthed amazement; while Clotilde grew as pale as she, in the certainty of the crime, which was now evident. It was an avowal, this terrified silence which had fallen between the mother, the son, and the granddaughter-the shuddering silence in which families bury their domestic tragedies. The doctor, in despair at having spoken, he who avoided so carefully all disagreeable and useless explanations, was trying desperately to retract his words, when a new catastrophe extricated him from his terrible embarrassment.
Felicite desired to take Charles away with her, in order not to trespass on the notary's kind hospitality; and as the latter had sent the boy after breakfast to spend an hour or two with Aunt Dide, he had sent the maid servant to the asylum with orders to bring him back immediately. It was at this juncture that the servant, whom they were waiting for in the garden, made her appearance, covered with perspiration, out of breath, and greatly excited, crying from a distance:
'My God! My God! come quickly. Master Charles is bathed in blood.'
Filled with consternation, all three set off for the asylum. This day chanced to be one of Aunt Dide's good days; very calm and gentle she sat erect in the armchair in which she had spent the hours, the long hours for twenty-two years past, looking straight before her into vacancy. She seemed to have grown still thinner, all the flesh had disappeared, her limbs were now only bones covered with parchment-like skin; and her keeper, the stout fair-haired girl, carried her, fed her, took her up and laid her down as if she had been a bundle. The ancestress, the forgotten one, tall, bony, ghastly, remained motionless, her eyes, only seeming to have life, her eyes shining clear as spring water in her thin withered face. But on this morning, again a sudden rush of tears had streamed down her cheeks, and she had begun to stammer words without any connection; which seemed to prove that in the midst of her senile exhaustion and the incurable torpor of madness, the slow induration of the brain and the limbs was not yet complete; there still were memories stored away, gleams of intelligence still were possible. Then her face had resumed its vacant expression. She seemed indifferent to every one and everything, laughing, sometimes, at an accident, at a fall, but most often seeing nothing and hearing nothing, gazing fixedly into vacancy.
When Charles had been brought to her the keeper had immediately installed him before the little table, in front of his great-great-grandmother. The girl kept a package of pictures for him-soldiers, captains, kings clad in purple and gold, and she gave them to him with a pair of scissors, saying:
'There, amuse yourself quietly, and behave well. You see that to-day grandmother is very good. You must be good, too.'
The boy raised his eyes to the madwoman's face, and both looked at each other. At this moment the resemblance between them was extraordinary. Their eyes, especially, their vacant and limpid eyes, seemed to lose themselves in one another, to be identical. Then it was the physiognomy, the whole face, the worn features of the centenarian, that passed over three generations to this delicate child's face, it, too, worn already, as it were, and aged by the wear of the race. Neither smiled, they regarded each other intently, with an air of grave imbecility.
'Well!' continued the keeper, who had acquired the habit of talking to herself to cheer herself when with her mad charge, 'you cannot deny each other. The same hand made you both. You are the very spit-down of each other. Come, laugh a bit, amuse yourselves, since you like to be together.'
But to fix his attention for any length of time fatigued Charles, and he was the first to lower his eyes; he seemed to be interested in his pictures, while Aunt Dide, who had an astonishing power of fixing her attention, as if she had been turned into stone, continued to look at him fixedly, without even winking an eyelid.
The keeper busied herself for a few moments in the little sunny room, made gay by its light, blue-flowered paper. She made the bed which she had been airing, she arranged the linen on the shelves of the press. But she generally profited by the presence of the boy to take a little relaxation. She had orders never to leave her charge alone, and now that he was here she ventured to trust her with him.
'Listen to me well,' she went on, 'I have to go out for a little, and if she stirs, if she should need me, ring for me, call me at once; do you hear? You understand, you are a big enough boy to be able to call one.'
He had looked up again, and made a sign that he had understood and that he would call her. And when he
