e to beat. And he sank into a sort of second childhood,
clasping his hands and stammering plaintively, terrified, and beseeching
compassion, like one whose sufferings are too hard to bear.

And when Mathieu sought to console him he muttered: "Oh, it is all over.
They have both gone, one after the other, and I alone am guilty. The
first time it was I who lied to Reine, telling her that her mother was
travelling; and then she in her turn lied to me the other day with that
story of an invitation to a chateau in the country. Ah! if eight years
ago I had only opposed my poor Valerie's madness, my poor Reine would
still be alive to-day.... Yes, it is all my fault; I alone killed them
by my weakness. I am their murderer."

Shivering, deathly cold, he went on amid his sobs: "And, wretched fool
that I have been, I have killed them through loving them too much. They
were so beautiful, and it was so excusable for them to be rich and gay
and happy. One after the other they took my heart from me, and I lived
only in them and by them and for them. When one had left me, the other
became my all in all, and for her, my daughter, I again indulged in the
dream of ambition which had originated with her mother. And yet I killed
them both, and my mad desire to rise and conquer fortune led me to that
twofold crime. Ah! when I think that even this morning I still dared
to esteem myself happy at having but that one child, that daughter to
cherish! What foolish blasphemy against love and life! She is dead now,
dead like her mother, and I am alone, with nobody to love and nobody
to love me--neither wife nor daughter, neither desire nor will, but
alone--ah! all alone, forever!"

It was the cry of supreme abandonment that he raised, while sinking to
the floor strengthless, with a great void within him; and all he could
do was to press Mathieu's hands and stammer: "Leave me--tell me nothing.
You alone were right. I refused the offers of life, and life has now
taken everything from me."

Mathieu, in tears himself, kissed him and lingered yet a few moments
longer in that tragic den, feeling more moved than he had ever felt
before. And when he went off he left the unhappy Morange in the charge
of Seraphine, who now treated him like a little ailing child whose
will-power was entirely gone.

And at Chantebled, as time went on, Mathieu and Marianne founded,
created, increased, and multiplied. During the two years which elapsed,
they again proved vict