h respect to the whole works. True, Beauchene had lived
several years longer, but his name no longer figured in that of the
firm. He had surrendered his last shred of interest in the business for
an annuity; and at last one evening it was learnt that he had died that
day, struck down by an attack of apoplexy after an over-copious lunch,
at the residence of his lady-friends, the aunt and the niece. He had
previously been sinking into a state of second childhood, the outcome
of his life of fast and furious pleasure. And this, then, was the end
of the egotistical debauchee, ever going from bad to worse, and finally
swept into the gutter.

"Why! what good wind has blown you here?" cried Denis gayly, when he
perceived his father. "Have you come to lunch? I'm still a bachelor, you
know; for it is only next Monday that I shall go to fetch Marthe and the
children from Dieppe, where they have spent a delightful September."

Then, on hearing that his mother was ailing, even in danger, he become
serious and anxious.

"Mamma ill, and in danger! You amaze me. I thought she was simply
troubled with some little indisposition. But come, father, what is
really the matter? Are you hiding something? Is something worrying you?"

Thereupon he listened to the plain and detailed statement which Mathieu
felt obliged to make to him. And he was deeply moved by it, as if the
dread of the catastrophe which it foreshadowed would henceforth upset
his life. "What!" he angrily exclaimed, "my brothers are up to these
fine pranks with their idiotic quarrel! I knew that they did not get
on well together. I had heard of things which saddened me, but I never
imagined that matters had gone so far, and that you and mamma were so
affected that you had shut yourselves up and were dying of it all! But
things must be set to rights! One must see Ambroise at once. Let us go
and lunch with him, and finish the whole business."

Before starting he had a few orders to give, so Mathieu went down to
wait for him in the factory yard. And there, during the ten minutes
which he spent walking about dreamily, all the distant past arose before
his eyes. He could see himself a mere clerk, crossing that courtyard
every morning on his arrival from Janville, with thirty sous for his
lunch in his pocket. The spot had remained much the same; there was the
central building, with its big clock, the workshops and the sheds, quite
a little town of gray structures, surmounted by two