ilar to a mere thing, apparently no longer even
knowing why she had been brought thither.

Mathieu and Boutan had been unwilling to retire. Since Monsieur was
at Nice in the company of those ladies, the aunt and the niece, they
decided to spend the night there in order that Constance might not be
left alone with the old servant. And towards midnight, while they were
chatting together in undertones, they were suddenly stupefied at hearing
Seraphine raise her voice, after preserving silence for three hours.

"He is dead, you know," said she.

Who was dead? At last they understood that she referred to Dr. Gaude.
The celebrated surgeon, had, indeed, been found in his consulting-room
struck down by sudden death, the cause of which was not clearly known.
In fact, the strangest, the most horrible and tragical stories were
current on the subject. According to one of them a patient had wreaked
vengeance on the doctor; and Mathieu, full of emotion, recalled that one
day, long ago, Seraphine herself had suggested that all Gaude's unhappy
patients ought to band themselves together and put an end to him.

When Seraphine perceived that Mathieu was gazing at her, as in a
nightmare, moved by the shuddering silence of that death-watch, she once
more grinned like a lunatic, and said: "He is dead, we were all there!"

It was insane, improbable, impossible; and yet was it true or was it
false? A cold, terrifying quiver swept by, the icy quiver of mystery, of
that which one knows not, which one will never know.

Boutan leant towards Mathieu and whispered in his ear: "She will be
raving mad and shut up in a padded cell before a week is over." And,
indeed, a week later the Baroness de Lowicz was wearing a straight
waistcoat. In her case Dr. Gaude's treatment had led to absolute
insanity.

Mathieu and Boutan watched beside Constance until daybreak. She never
opened her lips, nor raised her eyelids. As the sun rose up, she turned
towards the wall, and then she died.

XXII

STILL more years passed, and Mathieu was already sixty-eight and
Marianne sixty-five, when amid the increasing good fortune which they
owed to their faith in life, and their long courageous hopefulness, a
last battle, the most dolorous of their existence, almost struck them
down and sent them to the grave, despairing and inconsolable.

One evening Marianne went to bed, quivering, utterly distracted. Quite a
rending was taking place in the family. A disastrous