-like box, that coffin to
which wheels were adapted when she was taken out-of-doors for an airing.
She, formerly so brimful of life, ever astir and laughing, was dying of
inaction and immobility in that box. Of her old-time beauty she had
retained nothing save her hair, which clad her as with a royal mantle,
and she was so emaciated that she seemed to have grown smaller again, to
have become once more a child. And what was most distressing was the
expression on her pale face, the blank, frigid stare of her eyes which
did not see, the ever haunting absent look, as of one whom suffering
overwhelmed. However, she noticed that Pierre was gazing at her, and at
once desired to smile at him; but irresistible moans escaped her, and
when she did at last smile, it was like a poor smitten creature who is
convinced that she will expire before the miracle takes place. He was
overcome by it, and, amidst all the sufferings with which the carriage
abounded, hers were now the only ones that he beheld and heard, as though
one and all were summed up in her, in the long and terrible agony of her
beauty, gaiety, and youth.

Then by degrees, without taking his eyes from Marie, he again reverted to
former days, again lived those hours, fraught with a mournful and bitter
charm, which he had often spent beside her, when he called at the sorry
lodging to keep her company. M. de Guersaint had finally ruined himself
by trying to improve the artistic quality of the religious prints so
widely sold in France, the faulty execution of which quite irritated him.
His last resources had been swallowed up in the failure of a
colour-printing firm; and, heedless as he was, deficient in foresight,
ever trusting in Providence, his childish mind continually swayed by
illusions, he did not notice the awful pecuniary embarrassment of the
household; but applied himself to the study of aerial navigation, without
even realising what prodigious activity his elder daughter, Blanche, was
forced to display, in order to earn the living of her two children, as
she was wont to call her father and her sister. It was Blanche who, by
running about Paris in the dust or the mud from morning to evening in
order to give French or music lessons, contrived to provide the money
necessary for the unremitting attentions which Marie required. And Marie
often experienced attacks of despair--bursting into tears and accusing
herself of being the primary cause of their ruin, as for years an