“Yes, she is asleep. Her eyes are closed, and she does not stir.”
Then both went to look at her, holding their breath and walking with the utmost caution, so that the boards might not creak. Clotilde had indeed just fallen asleep: and her stupor seemed so profound that the two old women grew bold. They feared, however, that they might touch and waken her, for her chair stood close beside the bed. And then, to put one’s hand under a dead man’s pillow to rob him was a terrible and sacrilegious act, the thought of which filled them with terror. Might it not disturb his repose? Might he not move at the shock? The thought made them turn pale.
Félicité had advanced with outstretched hand, but she drew back, stammering:
“I am too short. You try, Martine.”
The servant in her turn approached the bed. But she was seized with such a fit of trembling that she was obliged to retreat lest she should fall.
“No, no, I cannot!” she said. “It seems to me that monsieur is going to open his eyes.”
And trembling and awe-struck they remained an instant longer in the lugubrious chamber full of the silence and the majesty of death, facing Pascal, motionless forever, and Clotilde, overwhelmed by the grief of her widowhood. Perhaps they saw, glorifying that mute head, guarding its work with all its weight, the nobility of a life spent in honorable labor. The flame of the tapers burned palely. A sacred awe filled the air, driving them from the chamber.
Félicité, who was so brave, who had never in her life flinched from anything, not even from bloodshed, fled as if she was pursued, saying:
“Come, come, Martine, we will find some other way; we will go look for an instrument.”
In the study they drew a breath of relief. Félicité looked in vain among the papers on Pascal’s work-table for the genealogical tree, which she knew was usually there. She would so gladly have begun her work of destruction with this. It was there, but in her feverish excitement she did not perceive it.