hole heart in the last kiss which he had bestowed on
his departed brother. Beauchene called him, as if desirous of diverting
him from his gloomy thoughts. "There, sit down here and continue this,"
said he.

Constance, in her turn entering the drawing-room, heard those words.
They were virtually the same as the words which her husband had
pronounced when making Blaise seat himself at that same table of
Maurice's, on the day when he had given him the place of that poor boy,
whose body almost seemed to be still lying on the bed in the adjoining
room. And she recoiled with fright on seeing Denis seated there and
writing. Had not Blaise resuscitated? Even as she had mistaken the twins
one for the other that very afternoon on rising from the gay baptismal
lunch, so now again she saw Blaise in Denis, the pair of them so similar
physically that in former times their parents had only been able to
distinguish them by the different color of their eyes. And thus it was
as if Blaise returned and resumed his place; Blaise, who would possess
the works although she had killed him. She had made a mistake; dead
as he was, he would nevertheless have the works. She had killed one of
those Froments, but behold another was born. When one died his brother
filled up the breach. And her crime then appeared to her such a useless
one, such a stupid one, that she was aghast at it, the hair on the nape
of her neck standing up, while she burst into a cold sweat of fear, and
recoiled as from a spectre.

"It is a notice for the workpeople," Beauchene repeated. "We will have
it posted at the entrance."

She wished to be brave, and, approaching her husband, she said to him:
"Draw it up yourself. Why give Blaise the trouble at such a moment as
this?"

She had said "Blaise"; and once more an icy sensation of horror came
over her. Unconsciously she had heard herself saying yonder, in the
ante-room: "Blaise, where did I put my boa?" And it was Denis who had
brought it to her. Of what use had it been for her to kill Blaise, since
Denis was there? When death mows down a soldier of life, another is
always ready to take the vacant post of combat.

But a last defeat awaited her. Mathieu and Marianne reappeared, while
Morange, seized with a need of motion, came and went with an air of
stupefaction, quite losing his wits amid his dreadful sufferings, those
awful things which could but unhinge his narrow mind.

"I am going down," stammered Marianne, trying t