into tears, faltering:

"What a sad death! What a horrible death!"

Pascal had recovered from his first shock, and he was almost smiling.

"Why horrible? He was eighty-four years old; he did not suffer. As for
me, I think it a superb death for that old rascal of an uncle, who, it
may be now said, did not lead a very exemplary life. You remember his
envelope; he had some very terrible and vile things upon his conscience,
which did not prevent him, however, from settling down later and growing
old, surrounded by every comfort, like an old humbug, receiving the
recompense of virtues which he did not possess. And here he lies like
the prince of drunkards, burning up of himself, consumed on the burning
funeral pile of his own body!"

And the doctor waved his hand in admiration.

"Just think of it. To be drunk to the point of not feeling that one is
on fire; to set one's self aflame, like a bonfire on St. John's day; to
disappear in smoke to the last bone. Think of Uncle Macquart starting
on his journey through space; first diffused through the four corners of
the room, dissolved in air and floating about, bathing all that belonged
to him; then escaping in a cloud of dust through the window, when I
opened it for him, soaring up into the sky, filling the horizon. Why,
that is an admirable death! To disappear, to leave nothing of himself
behind but a little heap of ashes and a pipe beside it!"

And he picked up the pipe to keep it, as he said, as a relic of Uncle
Macquart; while Clotilde, who thought she perceived a touch of bitter
mockery in his eulogistic rhapsody, shuddered anew with horror and
disgust. But suddenly she perceived something under the table--part of
the remains, perhaps.

"Look at that fragment there."

He stooped down and picked up with surprise a woman's glove, a yellow
glove.

"Why!" she cried, "it is grandmother's glove; the glove that was missing
last evening."

They looked at each other; by a common impulse the same explanation
rose to their lips, Felicite was certainly there yesterday; and a sudden
conviction forced itself on the doctor's mind--the conviction that his
mother had seen Uncle Macquart burning and that she had not quenched
him. Various indications pointed to this--the state of complete coolness
in which he found the room, the number of hours which he calculated to
have been necessary for the combustion of the body. He saw clearly the
same thought dawning in the terrified eyes of