nto his heart while she
was still a little child, and who, as she grew up, had gradually taken
possession of the whole place. Since he had settled at Plassans, he had
led a blest existence, wrapped up in his books, far from women. The only
passion he was ever known to have had, was his love for the lady who had
died, whose finger tips he had never kissed. He had not lived; he had
within him a reserve of youthfulness, of vigor, whose surging flood now
clamored rebelliously at the menace of approaching age. He would have
become attached to an animal, a stray dog that he had chanced to pick up
in the street, and that had licked his hand. And it was this child whom
he loved, all at once become an adorable woman, who now distracted him,
who tortured him by her hostility.

Pascal, so gay, so kind, now became insupportably gloomy and harsh. He
grew angry at the slightest word; he would push aside the astonished
Martine, who would look up at him with the submissive eyes of a beaten
animal. From morning till night he went about the gloomy house, carrying
his misery about with him, with so forbidding a countenance that no one
ventured to speak to him.

He never took Clotilde with him now on his visits, but went alone. And
thus it was that he returned home one afternoon, his mind distracted
because of an accident which had happened; having on his conscience, as
a physician, the death of a man.

He had gone to give a hypodermic injection to Lafouasse, the tavern
keeper, whose ataxia had within a short time made such rapid progress
that he regarded him as doomed. But, notwithstanding, Pascal still
fought obstinately against the disease, continuing the treatment, and as
ill luck would have it, on this day the little syringe had caught up at
the bottom of the vial an impure particle, which had escaped the filter.
Immediately a drop of blood appeared; to complete his misfortune, he had
punctured a vein. He was at once alarmed, seeing the tavern keeper turn
pale and gasp for breath, while large drops of cold perspiration broke
out upon his face. Then he understood; death came as if by a stroke of
lightning, the lips turning blue, the face black. It was an embolism;
he had nothing to blame but the insufficiency of his preparations, his
still rude method. No doubt Lafouasse had been doomed. He could
not, perhaps, have lived six months longer, and that in the midst of
atrocious sufferings, but the brutal fact of this terrible death was