se and passed by with the speed of the
wind. The papers became animate, incarnate, they jostled one another,
they trampled on one another, in a wild rush of suffering humanity.

"Ah, who will tell me, who will tell me, who will tell me?--Is it he
who died mad? he who was carried off by phthisis? he who was killed
by paralysis? she whose constitutional feebleness caused her to die
in early youth?--Whose is the poison of which I am to die? What is it,
hysteria, alcoholism, tuberculosis, scrofula? And what is it going to
make of me, an ataxic or a madman? A madman. Who was it said a madman?
They all say it--a madman, a madman, a madman!"

Sobs choked Pascal. He let his dejected head fall among the papers, he
wept endlessly, shaken by shuddering sobs. And Clotilde, seized by a
sort of awe, feeling the presence of the fate which rules over races,
left the room softly, holding her breath; for she knew that it would
mortify him exceedingly if he knew that she had been present.

Long periods of prostration followed. January was very cold. But the sky
remained wonderfully clear, a brilliant sun shone in the limpid blue;
and at La Souleiade, the windows of the study facing south formed a sort
of hothouse, preserving there a delightfully mild temperature. They did
not even light a fire, for the room was always filled with a flood of
sunshine, in which the flies that had survived the winter flew about
lazily. The only sound to be heard was the buzzing of their wings. It
was a close and drowsy warmth, like a breath of spring that had lingered
in the old house baked by the heat of summer.

Pascal, still gloomy, dragged through the days there, and it was there,
too, that he overheard one day the closing words of a conversation
which aggravated his suffering. As he never left his room now before
breakfast, Clotilde had received Dr. Ramond this morning in the study,
and they were talking there together in an undertone, sitting beside
each other in the bright sunshine.

It was the third visit which Ramond had made during the last week.
Personal reasons, the necessity, especially, of establishing definitely
his position as a physician at Plassans, made it expedient for him not
to defer his marriage much longer: and he wished to obtain from Clotilde
a decisive answer. On each of his former visits the presence of a third
person had prevented him from speaking. As he desired to receive her
answer from herself directly he had resolved to