hey passed
it. But while Lucy, Blanche and Caroline still remained behind, Rose
gave a final look round, for she wanted to leave the room in order. She
drew a curtain across the window, and then it occurred to her that the
lamp was not the proper thing and that a taper should take its place. So
she lit one of the copper candelabra on the chimney piece and placed
it on the night table beside the corpse. A brilliant light suddenly
illumined the dead woman's face. The women were horror-struck. They
shuddered and escaped.

"Ah, she's changed; she's changed!" murmured Rose Mignon, who was the
last to remain.

She went away; she shut the door. Nana was left alone with upturned face
in the light cast by the candle. She was fruit of the charnel house, a
heap of matter and blood, a shovelful of corrupted flesh thrown down on
the pillow. The pustules had invaded the whole of the face, so that each
touched its neighbor. Fading and sunken, they had assumed the grayish
hue of mud; and on that formless pulp, where the features had ceased to
be traceable, they already resembled some decaying damp from the
grave. One eye, the left eye, had completely foundered among bubbling
purulence, and the other, which remained half open, looked like a deep,
black, ruinous hole. The nose was still suppurating. Quite a reddish
crush was peeling from one of the cheeks and invading the mouth, which
it distorted into a horrible grin. And over this loathsome and grotesque
mask of death the hair, the beautiful hair, still blazed like sunlight
and flowed downward in rippling gold. Venus was rotting. It seemed as
though the poison she had assimilated in the gutters and on the carrion
tolerated by the roadside, the leaven with which she had poisoned
a whole people, had but now remounted to her face and turned it to
corruption.

The room was empty. A great despairing breath came up from the boulevard
and swelled the curtain.

"A BERLIN! A BERLIN! A BERLIN!"

THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER

CHAPTER I

THE BETROTHAL

Pere Merlier's mill, one beautiful summer evening, was arranged for a
grand fete. In the courtyard were three tables, placed end to end, which
awaited the guests. Everyone knew that Francoise, Merlier's daughter,
was that night to be betrothed to Dominique, a young man who was accused
of idleness but whom the fair sex for three leagues around gazed at with
sparkling eyes, such a fine appearance had he.

Pere Merlier's mill was