onscious 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