in him personally
to learn with pleasure----"

She became quite pale. The ex-law-clerk added:

"He is going to be married."

"He!"

"In a month at latest, to Mademoiselle Roque, the daughter of M.
Dambreuse's agent. He has even gone down to Nogent for no other purpose
but that."

She placed her hand over her heart, as if at the shock of a great blow;
but immediately she rang the bell. Deslauriers did not wait to be
ordered to leave. When she turned round he had disappeared.

Madame Arnoux was gasping a little with the strain of her emotions. She
drew near the window to get a breath of air.

On the other side of the street, on the footpath, a packer in his
shirt-sleeves was nailing down a trunk. Hackney-coaches passed. She
closed the window-blinds and then came and sat down. As the high houses
in the vicinity intercepted the sun's rays, the light of day stole
coldly into the apartment. Her children had gone out; there was not a
stir around her. It seemed as if she were utterly deserted.

"He is going to be married! Is it possible?"

And she was seized with a fit of nervous trembling.

"Why is this? Does it mean that I love him?"

Then all of a sudden:

"Why, yes; I love him--I love him!"

It seemed to her as if she were sinking into endless depths. The clock
struck three. She listened to the vibrations of the sounds as they died
away. And she remained on the edge of the armchair, with her eyeballs
fixed and an unchanging smile on her face.

The same afternoon, at the same moment, Frederick and Mademoiselle
Louise were walking in the garden belonging to M. Roque at the end of
the island.

Old Catherine was watching them, some distance away. They were walking
side by side and Frederick said:

"You remember when I brought you into the country?"

"How good you were to me!" she replied. "You assisted me in making
sand-pies, in filling my watering-pot, and in rocking me in the swing!"

"All your dolls, who had the names of queens and marchionesses--what has
become of them?"

"Really, I don't know!"

"And your pug Moricaud?"

"He's drowned, poor darling!"

"And the _Don Quixote_ of which we coloured the engravings together?"

"I have it still!"

He recalled to her mind the day of her first communion, and how pretty
she had been at vespers, with her white veil and her large wax-taper,
whilst the girls were all taking their places in a row around the choir,
and the bell was tinkling.

These mem