You must have read
about her case in the newspapers, she was sent to prison with a medical
man named Sarraille."

"La Rouche! Sarraille!" Yes, Mathieu had certainly read the trial of
those two social pests, who were fated to meet at last in their work of
iniquity. And what an echo did those names awaken in the past: Valerie
Morange! Reine Morange! Already in the factory yard Mathieu had fancied
that he could see the shadow of Morange gliding past him--the punctual,
timid, soft-hearted accountant, whom misfortune and insanity had carried
off into the darkness. And suddenly the unhappy man here again appeared
to Mathieu, like a wandering phantom, the restless victim of all the
imbecile ambition, all the desperate craving for pleasure which animated
the period; a poor, weak, mediocre being, so cruelly punished for the
crimes of others, that he was doubtless unable to sleep in the tomb
into which he had flung himself, bleeding, with broken limbs. And before
Mathieu's eyes there likewise passed the spectre of Seraphine, with
the fierce and pain-fraught face of one who is racked and killed by
insatiate desire.

"Well, excuse me for having ventured to stop you, Monsieur Froment,"
Celeste concluded; "but I am very, very pleased at having met you
again."

He was still looking at her; and as he quitted her he said, with the
indulgence born of his optimism: "May you keep happy since you are
happy. Happiness must know what it does."

Nevertheless, Mathieu remained disturbed, as he thought of the apparent
injustice of impassive nature. The memory of his Marianne, struck down
by such deep grief, pining away through the impious quarrels of her
sons, returned to him. And as Ambroise at last came in and gayly
embraced him, after receiving Celeste's thanks, he felt a thrill of
anguish, for the decisive moment which would save or wreck the family
was now at hand.

Indeed, Denis, after inviting himself and Mathieu to lunch, promptly
plunged into the subject.

"We are not here for the mere pleasure of lunching with you," said he;
"mamma is ill, did you know it?"

"Ill?" said Ambroise. "Not seriously ill?"

"Yes, very ill, in danger. And are you aware that she has been ill
like this ever since she came to speak to you about the quarrel between
Gregoire and Gervais, when it seems that you treated her very roughly."

"I treated her roughly? We simply talked business, and perhaps I spoke
to her like a business man, a little bluntly