He had spoken enough, this man; he could speak no more. Besides he now
felt his heart calm; he wanted to die in peace. What need had he to make
a confession to the deputy of God, since he had just done so to his son,
who constituted his own family?

He received the last rites, was purified and absolved, in the midst of
his friends and his servants on their bended knees, without any movement
of his face indicating that he still lived.

He expired about midnight, after four hours' convulsive movements, which
showed that he must have suffered dreadfully in his last moments.

* * * * *

PART II

It was on the following Tuesday that they buried him, the shooting
opened on Sunday. On his return home, after having accompanied his
father to the cemetery, Cesar Hautot spent the rest of the day weeping.
He scarcely slept at all on the following night, and he felt so sad on
awakening that he asked himself how he could go on living.

However, he kept thinking until evening that, in order to obey the last
wish of his father, he ought to repair to Rouen next day, and see this
girl Catholine Donet, who resided in the Rue d'Eperlan in the third
story, second door. He had repeated to himself in a whisper, just as a
little boy repeats a prayer, this name and address, a countless number
of times, so that he might not forget them, and he ended by lisping them
continually, without being able to stop or to think of what it was, so
much were his tongue and his mind possessed by the appellation.

According, on the following day, about eight o'clock, he ordered
Graindorge to be yoked to the tilbury, and set forth, at the quick
trotting pace of the heavy Norman horse, along the high road from the
Ainville to Rouen. He wore his black frock coat drawn over his
shoulders, a tall silk hat on his head, and on his legs his breeches
with straps; and he did not wish, on account of the occasion, to
dispense with the handsome costume, the blue overall which swelled in
the wind, protected the cloth from dust and from stains, and which was
to be removed quickly on reaching his destination the moment he had
jumped out of the coach.

He entered Rouen accordingly just as it was striking ten o'clock, drew
up, as he had usually done at the Hotel des Bon-Enfants, in the Rue des
Trois-Mares, submitted to the hugs of the landlord and his wife and
their five children, for they had heard the melancholy news; after that,
he h