ich the odor of the roses rendered the more oppressive,
that laughing child had set a semblance of budding springtime, the
fresh, bright atmosphere of a long promise of life. And it typified
the victory of fruitfulness; it was the child's child, it was Marianne
reviving in her son's daughter. A grandmother already, and she was
only forty-one years old! Marianne had smiled at that thought. But the
hatchet-stroke rang out yet more frightfully in Constance's heart. In
her case the tree was cut down to its very root, the sole scion had been
lopped off, and none would ever sprout again.

For yet another moment she remained alone amid that nothingness, in that
room where lay her son's remains. Then she made up her mind and passed
into the drawing-room, with the air of a frozen spectre. They all rose,
kissed her, and shivered as their lips touched her cold cheeks, which
her blood was unable to warm. Profound compassion wrung them, so
frightful was her calmness. And they sought kind words to say to her,
but she curtly stopped them.

"It is all over," said she; "there is nothing to be said. Everything is
ended, quite ended."

Madame Angelin sobbed, Angelin himself wiped his poor fixed, blurred
eyes. Marianne and Mathieu shed tears while retaining Constance's hands
in theirs. And she, rigid and still unable to weep, refused consolation,
repeating in monotonous accents: "It is finished; nothing can give him
back to me. Is it not so? And thus there remains nothing; all is ended,
quite ended."

She needed to be brave, for visitors would soon be arriving in a stream.
But a last stab in the heart was reserved for her. Beauchene, who
since her arrival had begun to cry again, could no longer see to write.
Moreover, his hand trembled, and he had to leave the writing-table and
fling himself into an armchair, saying to Blaise: "There sit down there,
and continue to write for me."

Then Constance saw Blaise seat himself at her son's writing-table, in
his place, dip his pen in the inkstand and begin to write with the very
same gesture that she had so often seen Maurice make. That Blaise,
that son of the Froments! What! her dear boy was not yet buried, and
a Froment already replaced him, even as vivacious, fast-growing plants
overrun neighboring barren fields. That stream of life flowing around
her, intent on universal conquest, seemed yet more threatening;
grandmothers still bore children, daughters suckled already, sons laid
hands upo