er terribly--the first, when she was in her ardent
prime, when a _gendarme_ shot down her lover Macquart, the smuggler,
like a dog; the second, years ago, when another _gendarme_ shattered
with a pistol shot the skull of her grandson Silvere, the insurgent, the
victim of the hatred and the sanguinary strife of the family. Blood
had always bespattered her. And a third moral shock finished her; blood
bespattered her again, the impoverished blood of her race, which she
had just beheld flowing slowly, and which lay upon the ground, while the
fair royal child, his veins and his heart empty, slept.

Three times--face to face with her past life, her life red with passion
and suffering, haunted by the image of expiation--she stammered:

"The _gendarme_! the _gendarme_! the _gendarme_!"

Then she sank back into her armchair. They thought she was dead, killed
by the shock.

But the keeper at this moment at last appeared, endeavoring to excuse
herself, fearing that she would be dismissed. When, aided by her, Dr.
Pascal had placed Aunt Dide on the bed, he found that the old mother was
still alive. She was not to die until the following day, at the age of
one hundred and five years, three months, and seven days, of congestion
of the brain, caused by the last shock she had received.

Pascal, turning to his mother, said:

"She will not live twenty-four hours; to-morrow she will be dead. Ah!
Uncle Macquart, then she, and this poor boy, one after another. How much
misery and grief!"

He paused and added in a lower tone:

"The family is thinning out; the old trees fall and the young die
standing."

Felicite must have thought this another allusion. She was sincerely
shocked by the tragic death of little Charles. But, notwithstanding,
above the horror which she felt there arose a sense of immense relief.
Next week, when they should have ceased to weep, what a rest to be able
to say to herself that all this abomination of the Tulettes was at an
end, that the family might at last rise, and shine in history!

Then she remembered that she had not answered the involuntary accusation
made against her by her son at the notary's; and she spoke again of
Macquart, through bravado:

"You see now that servants are of no use. There was one here, and yet
she prevented nothing; it would have been useless for Uncle Macquart
to have had one to take care of him; he would be in ashes now, all the
same."

She sighed, and then continued in a bro