moned. On the morrow, alarmed, though he scarcely dared to say it,
by the lightning-like progress of the illness, the doctor insisted on a
consultation, and two of his colleagues being summoned, they soon agreed
together. The malady was an extremely infectious form of galloping
consumption, the more violent since it had found in the patient a field
where there was little to resist its onslaught. Beauchene was away from
home, travelling as usual. Constance, for her part, in spite of the
grave mien of the doctors, who could not bring themselves to tell her
the brutal truth, remained, in spite of growing anxiety, full of a
stubborn hope that her son, the hero, the demi-god necessary for her own
life, could not be seriously ill and likely to die. But only three
days elapsed, and during the very night that Beauchene returned home,
summoned by a telegram, the young fellow expired in her arms.

In reality his death was simply the final decomposition of impoverished,
tainted, bourgeois blood, the sudden disappearance of a poor, mediocre
being who, despite a facade of seeming health, had been ailing since
childhood. But what an overwhelming blow it was both for the mother and
for the father, all whose dreams and calculations it swept away! The
only son, the one and only heir, the prince of industry, whom they had
desired with such obstinate, scheming egotism, had passed away like a
shadow; their arms clasped but a void, and the frightful reality arose
before them; a moment had sufficed, and they were childless.

Blaise was with the parents at the bedside at the moment when Maurice
expired. It was then about two in the morning, and as soon as possible
he telegraphed the news of the death to Chantebled. Nine o'clock was
striking when Marianne, very pale, quite upset, came into the yard to
call Mathieu.

"Maurice is dead!... _Mon Dieu_! an only son; poor people!"

They stood there thunderstruck, chilled and trembling. They had simply
heard that the young man was poorly; they had not imagined him to be
seriously ill.

"Let me go to dress," said Mathieu; "I shall take the quarter-past ten
o'clock train. I must go to kiss them."

Although Marianne was expecting her eleventh child before long, she
decided to accompany her husband. It would have pained her to be
unable to give this proof of affection to her cousins, who, all things
considered, had treated Blaise and his young wife very kindly. Moreover,
she was really grieved by t