e her features by the aid
of art who knows but that a thought of after life had perhaps returned
to awaken Francine in her first slumber of the sleep that knows no end.
Perhaps she had remembered the he whom she had just left was an artist
at the same time as a lover, that he was both because he could not be
one without the other, that for him love was the soul of heart and that
if he had loved her so, it was because she had been for him a mistress
and a woman, a sentiment in form. And then, perhaps, Francine, wishing
to leave Jacques the human form that had become for him an incarnate
ideal, had been able though dead and cold already to once more clothe
her face with all the radiance of love and with all the graces of youth,
to resuscitate the art treasure.

And perhaps too, the poor girl had thought rightly, for there exist
among true artists singular Pygmalions who, contrary to the original
one, would like to turn their living Galateas to marble.

In presence of the serenity of this face on which the death pangs had no
longer left any trace, no one would have believed in the prolonged
sufferings that had served as a preface to death. Francine seemed to be
continuing a dream of love, and seeing her thus one would have said that
she had died of beauty.

The doctor, worn out with fatigue, was asleep in a corner.

As to Jacques, he was again plunged in doubt. His mind beset with
hallucinations, persisted in believing that she whom he had loved so
well was on the point of awakening, and as faint nervous contractions,
due to the recent action of the plaster, broke at intervals the
immobility of the corpse, this semblance of life served to maintain
Jacques in his blissful illusion, which lasted until morning, when a
police official called to verify the death and authorize internment.

Besides, if it needed all the folly of despair to doubt of her death on
beholding this beautiful creature, it also needed all the infallibility
of science to believe it.

While the neighbor was putting Francine into her shroud, Jacques was led
away into the next room, where he found some of his friends who had come
to follow the funeral. The Bohemians desisted as regards Jacques, whom,
however, they loved in brotherly fashion, from all those consolations
which only serve to irritate grief. Without uttering one of those
remarks so hard to frame and so painful to listen to, they silently
shook their friend by the hand in turn.

"Her deat