n, and loving, willing, battling, toiling even amid suffering,
and ever tending to increase of life and increase of hope.

XV

AMID the deep mourning life slowly resumed its course at the Beauchene
works. One effect of the terrible blow which had fallen on Beauchene was
that for some weeks he remained quietly at home. Indeed, he seemed to
have profited by the terrible lesson, for he no longer coined lies, no
longer invented pressing business journeys as a pretext for dissipation.
He even set to work once more, and busied himself about the factory,
coming down every morning as in his younger days. And in Blaise he found
an active and devoted lieutenant, on whom he each day cast more and more
of the heavier work. Intimates were most struck, however, by the manner
in which Beauchene and his wife drew together again. Constance was most
attentive to her husband; Beauchene no longer left her, and they seemed
to agree well together, leading a very retired life in their quiet
house, where only relatives were now received.

Constance, on the morrow of Maurice's sudden death, was like one who
has just lost a limb. It seemed to her that she was no longer whole; she
felt ashamed of being, as it were, disfigured. Mingled, too, with her
loving sorrow for Maurice there was humiliation at the thought that she
was no longer a mother, that she no longer had any heir-apparent to her
kingdom beside her. To think that she had been so stubbornly determined
to have but one son, one child, in order that he might become the sole
master of the family fortune, the all-powerful monarch of the future.
Death had stolen him from her, and the establishment now seemed to be
less her own, particularly since that fellow Blaise and his wife and
his child, representing those fruitful and all-invading Froments, were
installed there. She could no longer console herself for having welcomed
and lodged them, and her one passionate, all-absorbing desire was to
have another son, and thereby reconquer her empire.

This it was which led to her reconciliation with her husband, and for
six months they lived together on the best of terms. Then, however, came
another six months, and it was evident that they no longer agreed so
well together, for Beauchene took himself off at times under the pretext
of seeking fresh air, and Constance remained at home, feverish, her eyes
red with weeping.

One day Mathieu, who had come to Grenelle to see his daughter-in-law,