n vacant kingdoms. And she remained alone; she had but her
unworthy, broken-down, worn-out husband beside her; while Morange, the
maniac, incessantly walking to and fro, was like the symbolical spectre
of human distress, one whose heart and strength and reason had been
carried away in the frightful death of his only daughter. And not a
sound came from the cold and empty works; the works themselves were
dead.

The funeral ceremony two days later was an imposing one. The five
hundred workmen of the establishment followed the hearse, notabilities
of all sorts made up an immense cortege. It was much noticed that an old
workman, father Moineaud, the oldest hand of the works, was one of the
pall-bearers. Indeed, people thought it touching, although the worthy
old man dragged his legs somewhat, and looked quite out of his element
in a frock coat, stiffened as he was by thirty years' hard toil. In the
cemetery, near the grave, Mathieu felt surprised on being approached by
an old lady who alighted from one of the mourning-coaches.

"I see, my friend," said she, "that you do not recognize me."

He made a gesture of apology. It was Seraphine, still tall and slim, but
so fleshless, so withered that one might have thought she was a hundred
years old. Cecile had warned Mathieu of it, yet if he had not seen her
himself he would never have believed that her proud insolent beauty,
which had seemed to defy time and excesses, could have faded so swiftly.
What frightful, withering blast could have swept over her?

"Ah! my friend," she continued, "I am more dead than the poor fellow
whom they are about to lower into that grave. Come and have a chat with
me some day. You are the only person to whom I can tell everything."

The coffin was lowered, the ropes gave out a creaking sound, and there
came a little thud--the last. Beauchene, supported by a relative, looked
on with dim, vacant eyes. Constance, who had had the bitter courage to
come, and had now wept all the tears in her body, almost fainted. She
was carried away, driven back to her home, which would now forever be
empty, like one of those stricken fields that remain barren, fated to
perpetual sterility. Mother earth had taken back her all.

And at Chantebled Mathieu and Marianne founded, created, increased, and
multiplied, again proving victorious in the eternal battle which
life wages against death, thanks to that continual increase, both of
offspring and of fertile land, which