once, as Victor Moineaud pointed out that the old man had certainly been the first to fall, since one of the young man's legs had been stretched across his stomach, Mathieu was carried fourteen years backward. He remembered old Moineaud picking up Blaise on the very spot where Victor, the son, had just picked up Morange and Alexandre. Blaise! At the thought of his dead boy fresh light came to Mathieu, a frightful suspicion blazed up amid the terrible obscurity in which he had been groping and doubting. And, thereupon, leaving Denis to settle everything down below, he decided to see Constance.
Up above, however, when Mathieu was on the point of turning into the communicating passage, he paused once more, this time near the lift. It was there, fourteen years previously, that Morange, finding the trap open, had gone down to warn and chide the workmen, while Constance, according to her own account, had quietly returned into the house, at the very moment when Blaise, coming from the other end of the dim gallery, plunged into the gulf. Everybody had eventually accepted that narrative as being accurate, but Mathieu now felt that it was mendacious. He could recall various glances, various words, various spells of silence; and sudden certainty came upon him, a certainty based on all the petty things which he had not then understood, but which now assumed the most frightful significance. Yes, it was certain, even though round it there hovered the monstrous vagueness of silent crimes, cowardly crimes, over which a shadow of horrible mystery always lurks. Moreover, it explained the sequel, those two bodies lying below, as far, that is, as logical reasoning can explain a madman's action with all its gaps and mysteriousness. Nevertheless, Mathieu still strove to doubt; before anything else he wished to see Constance.
Showing a waxy pallor, she had remained erect, motionless, in the middle of her little drawing-room. The waiting of fourteen years previously had begun once more, lasting on and on, and filling her with such anxiety that she held her breath the better to listen. Nothing, no stir, no sound of footsteps, had yet ascended from the works. What could be happening then? Was the hateful thing, the dreaded thing, merely a nightmare after all? Yet Morange had really sneered in her face, she had fully understood him. Had not a howl, the thud of a fall, just reached her ears? And now, had not the rumbling of the machinery ceased? It was death, the factory silent, chilled and lost for her. All at once her heart ceased beating as she detected a sound of footsteps drawing nearer and nearer with increased rapidity. The door opened, and it was Mathieu who came in.
She recoiled, livid, as at the sight of a ghost. He, O God! Why he? How was it he was there? Of all the messengers of misfortune he was the one whom she had least expected. Had the dead son risen before her she would not have shuddered more dreadfully than she did at this apparition of the father.
She did not speak. He simply said: 'They made the plunge, they are both dead-like Blaise.'
Then, though she still said nothing, she looked at him. For a moment their eyes met. And in her glance he read everything: the murder was begun afresh, effected, consummated. Over yonder lay the bodies, dead, one atop of the other.
'Wretched woman, to what monstrous perversity have you fallen! And how much blood there is upon you!'
By an effort of supreme pride Constance was able to draw herself up and even increase her stature, still wishing to conquer, and cry aloud that she was indeed the murderess, that she had always thwarted him, and would ever do so. But Mathieu was already overwhelming her with a final revelation.
'You don't know, then, that that ruffian, Alexandre, was one of the murderers of your friend, Madame Angelin, the poor woman who was robbed and strangled one winter afternoon. I compassionately hid that from you. But he would now be at the galleys had I spoken out! And if I were to speak to-day you would be there too!'
That was the hatchet-stroke. She did not speak, but dropped, all of a lump, upon the carpet, like a tree which has been felled. This time her defeat was complete; destiny, which she awaited, had turned against her and thrown her to the ground. A mother the less, perverted by the love which she had set on her one child, a mother duped, robbed, and maddened, who had glided into murder amid the dementia born of inconsolable motherliness! And now she lay there, stretched out, scraggy and withered, poisoned by the affection which she had been unable to bestow.
Mathieu became anxious, and summoned the old servant, who, after procuring assistance, carried her mistress to her bed and then undressed her. Meantime, as Constance gave no sign of life, seized as she was by one of those fainting fits which often left her quite breathless, Mathieu himself went for Boutan, and meeting him just as he was returning home for dinner, was luckily able to bring him back at once.
Boutan, who was now nearly seventy-two, and was quietly spending his last years in serene cheerfulness, born of his hope in life, had virtually ceased practising, only attending a very few old patients, his friends. However, he did not refuse Mathieu's request. When he had examined Constance he made a gesture of hopelessness, the meaning of which was so plain that Mathieu, his anxiety increasing, bethought himself of trying to find Beauchene in order that the latter might, at least, be present if his wife should die. But the old servant, on being questioned, began by raising her arms to heaven. She did not know where Monsieur might be, Monsieur never left any address. At last, feeling frightened herself, she made up her mind to hasten to the abode of the two women, aunt and niece, with whom Beauchene spent the greater part of his time. She knew their address perfectly well, as her mistress had even sent her thither in pressing emergencies. But she learnt that the ladies had gone with Monsieur to Nice for a holiday; whereupon, not desiring to return without some member of the family, she was seized on her way back with the fine idea of calling on Monsieur's sister, the Baroness de Lowicz, whom she brought, almost by force, in her cab.
It was in vain that Boutan attempted treatment. When Constance opened her eyes again, she looked at him fixedly, recognized him, no doubt, and then lowered her eyelids. And from that moment she obstinately refused to reply to any question that was put to her. She must have heard and have known that people were there, trying to succor her. But she would have none of their succor, she was stubbornly intent on dying, on giving no further sign of life. Neither did she raise her eyelids, nor did her lips part again. It was as if she had already quitted the world amid the mute agony of her defeat.
That evening Seraphine's manner was extremely strange. She reeked of ether, for she drank ether now. When she heard of the two-fold 'accident,' the death of Morange and that of Alexandre, which had brought on Constance's cardiacal attack, she simply gave an insane grin, a kind of involuntary snigger, and stammered: 'Ah! that's funny.'
Though she removed neither her hat nor her gloves, she installed herself in an armchair, where she sat waiting, with her eyes wide open and staring straight before her-those brown eyes flecked with gold, whose living light was all that she had retained of her massacred beauty. At sixty-two she looked like a centenarian; her bold, insolent face was ravined, as it were, by her stormy life, and the glow of her sun-like hair had been extinguished by a shower of ashes. And time went on, midnight approached, and she was still there, near that death-bed of which she seemed to be ignorant, in that quivering chamber where she forgot herself, similar to a mere thing, apparently no longer even knowing why she had been brought thither.
Mathieu and Boutan had been unwilling to retire. Since Monsieur was at Nice in the company of those ladies, the aunt and the niece, they decided to spend the night there in order that Constance might not be left alone with the old servant. And towards midnight, while they were chatting together in undertones, they were suddenly stupefied at hearing Seraphine raise her voice, after preserving silence for three hours.
'He is dead, you know,' said she.
Who was dead? At last they understood that she referred to Dr. Gaude. The celebrated surgeon, had, indeed, been found in his consulting-room struck down by sudden death, the cause of which was not clearly known. In fact, the strangest, the most horrible and tragical stories were current on the subject. According to one of them a patient had wreaked vengeance on the doctor; and Mathieu, full of emotion, recalled that one day, long ago, Seraphine herself had suggested that all Gaude's unhappy patients ought to band themselves together and put an end to him.
When Seraphine perceived that Mathieu was gazing at her, as in a nightmare, moved by the shuddering silence of that death-watch, she once more grinned like a lunatic, and said: 'He is dead, we were all there!'
It was insane, improbable, impossible; and yet was it true or was it false? A cold, terrifying quiver swept by, the icy quiver of mystery, of that which one knows not, which one will never know.
Boutan leant towards Mathieu and whispered in his ear: 'She will be raving mad and shut up in a padded cell before a week is over.' And, indeed, a week later the Baroness de Lowicz was wearing a straight waistcoat. In her case Dr. Gaude's treatment had led to absolute insanity.
Mathieu and Boutan watched beside Constance until daybreak. She never opened her lips, nor raised her
