nd, the terrible wind, which
threatened to blow down the house.

How many times during this last day did they not go over to the window,
attracted by the storm, wishing that it would sweep away the world.
During these squalls the sun did not cease to shine, the sky remained
constantly blue, but a livid blue, windswept and dusty, and the sun was
a yellow sun, pale and cold. They saw in the distance the vast white
clouds rising from the roads, the trees bending before the blast,
looking as if they were flying all in the same direction, at the same
rate of speed; the whole country parched and exhausted by the unvarying
violence of the wind that blew ceaselessly, with a roar like thunder.
Branches were snapped and whirled out of sight; roofs were lifted up and
carried so far away that they were never afterward found. Why could not
the mistral take them all up together and carry them off to some unknown
land, where they might be happy? The trunks were almost packed when
Pascal went to open one of the shutters that the wind had blown to, but
so fierce a gust swept in through the half open window that Clotilde had
to go to his assistance. Leaning with all their weight, they were able
at last to turn the catch. The articles of clothing in the room were
blown about, and they gathered up in fragments a little hand mirror
which had fallen from a chair. Was this a sign of approaching death, as
the women of the faubourg said?

In the evening, after a mournful dinner in the bright dining-room,
with its great bouquets of flowers, Pascal said he would retire early.
Clotilde was to leave on the following morning by the ten o'clock
train, and he feared for her the long journey--twenty hours of railway
traveling. But when he had retired he was unable to sleep. At first he
thought it was the wind that kept him awake. The sleeping house was
full of cries, voices of entreaty and voices of anger, mingled together,
accompanied by endless sobbing. Twice he got up and went to listen at
Clotilde's door, but he heard nothing. He went downstairs to close a
door that banged persistently, like misfortune knocking at the walls.
Gusts blew through the dark rooms, and he went to bed again, shivering
and haunted by lugubrious visions.

At six o'clock Martine, fancying she heard her master knocking for her
on the floor of his room, went upstairs. She entered the room with the
alert and excited expression which she had worn for the past two days;
but sh