had promised to render her. These
things were set down simply as his impulse dictated, like a kind of
confession by which he relieved his feelings. He had not yet come to
any positive decision as to how he should play the part of a justiciar,
which seemed so heavy to his shoulders. His one purpose was to warn
Mathieu in order that there might be two of them to decide and act.
And he simply finished by asking the other to come to see him on the
following evening, though not before six o'clock, as he desired to see
Alexandre and learn how the interview passed off, and what Constance
might require of the young man.

The ensuing night, the ensuing day, must have been full of abominable
torment for Morange. The doorkeeper's wife recounted, later on, that the
fourth-floor tenant had heard the old gentleman walking about overhead
all through the night. Doors were slammed, and furniture was dragged
about as if for a removal. It was even thought that one could detect
cries, sobs, and the monologues of a madman addressing phantoms, some
mysterious rendering of worship to the dead who haunted him. And at
the works during the day which followed Morange gave alarming signs of
distress, of the final sinking of his mind into a flood of gloom.
Ever darting troubled glances around him, he was tortured by internal
combats, which, without the slightest motive, made him descend the
stairs a dozen times, linger before the machinery in motion, and then
return to his additions up above, with the bewildered, distracted air
of one who could not find what he sought so painfully. When the darkness
fell, about four o'clock on that gloomy winter day, the two clerks whom
he had with him in his office noticed that he altogether ceased working.
From that moment, indeed, he waited with his eyes fixed upon the clock.
And when five o'clock struck he once more made sure that a certain total
was correct, then rose and went out, leaving the ledger open, as if he
meant to return to check the next addition.

He followed the gallery which led to the passage connecting the
workshops with the private house. The whole factory was at that hour
lighted up, electric lamps cast the brightness of daylight over it,
while the stir of work ascended and the walls shook amid the rumbling
of machinery. And all at once, before reaching the passage, Morange
perceived the lift, the terrible cavity, the abyss of murder in which
Blaise had met his death fourteen years previous