n the pleasant country by the Meuse, marriage, a little house, a little
field to till whose produce should suffice for the needs of two people
whose ideas were not extravagant. Now the dream was become an eager
longing, a penetrating conviction that, with a wife as loving and
industrious as she, existence would be a veritable earthly paradise. And
she, the tranquillity of whose mind had never in those days been ruffled
by thoughts of that nature, in the chaste and unconscious bestowal of
her heart, now saw clearly and understood the true condition of her
feelings. That marriage, of which she had not admitted to herself the
possibility, had been, unknown to her, the object of her desire. The
seed that had germinated had pushed its way in silence and in darkness;
it was love, not sisterly affection, that she bore toward that young
man whose company had at first been to her nothing more than a source of
comfort and consolation. And that was what their eyes told each other,
and the love thus openly expressed could have no other fruition than an
eternal farewell. It needed but that frightful sacrifice, the rending
of their heart-strings by that supreme parting, the prospect of their
life's happiness wrecked amid all the other ruins, swept away by the
crimson tide that ended their brother's life.

With a slow and painful effort Jean rose from his knees.

"Farewell!"

Henriette stood motionless in her place.

"Farewell!"

But Jean could not tear himself away thus. Advancing to the bedside he
sorrowfully scanned the dead man's face, with its lofty forehead that
seemed loftier still in death, its wasted features, its dull eyes,
whence the wild look that had occasionally been seen there in life had
vanished. He longed to give a parting kiss to his little one, as he had
called him so many times, but dared not. It seemed to him that his hands
were stained with his friend's blood; he shrank from the horror of the
ordeal. Ah, what a death to die, amid the crashing ruins of a sinking
world! On the last day, among the shattered fragments of the dying
Commune, might not this last victim have been spared? He had gone from
life, hungering for justice, possessed by the dream that haunted him,
the sublime and unattainable conception of the destruction of the old
society, of Paris chastened by fire, of the field dug up anew, that
from the soil thus renewed and purified might spring the idyl of another
golden age.

His heart overflowin