Three times—face to face with her past life, her life red with passion and suffering, haunted by the image of expiation—she stammered:
“The gendarme! the gendarme! the gendarme!”
Then she sank back into her armchair. They thought she was dead, killed by the shock.
But the keeper at this moment at last appeared, endeavoring to excuse herself, fearing that she would be dismissed. When, aided by her, Dr. Pascal had placed Aunt Dide on the bed, he found that the old mother was still alive. She was not to die until the following day, at the age of one hundred and five years, three months, and seven days, of congestion of the brain, caused by the last shock she had received.
Pascal, turning to his mother, said:
“She will not live twenty-four hours; to-morrow she will be dead. Ah! Uncle Macquart, then she, and this poor boy, one after another. How much misery and grief!”
He paused and added in a lower tone:
“The family is thinning out; the old trees fall and the young die standing.”
Félicité must have thought this another allusion. She was sincerely shocked by the tragic death of little Charles. But, notwithstanding, above the horror which she felt there arose a sense of immense relief. Next week, when they should have ceased to weep, what a rest to be able to say to herself that all this abomination of the Tulettes was at an end, that the family might at last rise, and shine in history!
Then she remembered that she had not answered the involuntary accusation made against her by her son at the notary’s; and she spoke again of Macquart, through bravado: