formed by the notes, the doctor had hidden the blue paper wrappers. And
then began a mad work of havoc, a fury of destruction; the envelopes
were gathered up in handfuls and thrown into the flames, filling the
fireplace with a roar like that of a conflagration.

"They are burning, they are burning! They are burning at last! Here
is another, Martine, here is another. Ah, what a fire, what a glorious
fire!"

But the servant was becoming uneasy.

"Take care, madame, you are going to set the house on fire. Don't you
hear that roar?"

"Ah! what does that matter? Let it all burn. They are burning, they are
burning; what a fine sight! Three more, two more, and, see, now the last
is burning!"

She laughed with delight, beside herself, terrible to see, when some
fragment of lighted soot fell down. The roar was becoming more and more
fierce; the chimney, which was never swept, had caught fire. This seemed
to excite her still more, while the servant, losing her head, began to
scream and run about the room.

Clotilde slept beside the dead Pascal, in the supreme calm of the
bedroom, unbroken save by the light vibration of the clock striking
the hours. The tapers burned with a tall, still flame, the air was
motionless. And yet, in the midst of her heavy, dreamless sleep, she
heard, as in a nightmare, a tumult, an ever-increasing rush and roar.
And when she opened her eyes she could not at first understand. Where
was she? Why this enormous weight that crushed her heart? She came back
to reality with a start of terror--she saw Pascal, she heard Martine's
cries in the adjoining room, and she rushed out, in alarm, to learn
their cause.

But at the threshold Clotilde took in the whole scene with cruel
distinctness--the press wide open and completely empty; Martine maddened
by her fear of fire; Felicite radiant, pushing into the flames with her
foot the last fragments of the envelopes. Smoke and flying soot filled
the study, where the roaring of the fire sounded like the hoarse gasping
of a murdered man--the fierce roar which she had just heard in her
sleep.

And the cry which sprang from her lips was the same cry that Pascal
himself had uttered on the night of the storm, when he surprised her in
the act of stealing his papers.

"Thieves! assassins!"

She precipitated herself toward the fireplace, and, in spite of the
dreadful roaring of the flames, in spite of the falling pieces of soot,
at the risk of setting her hair on f