Mathieu, however, asked her, "Am I to inform Beauchêne of the steps I take?"
"Do you as you please," she answered. "Still, that would be the best."
That same evening there came a complete rupture between herself and her husband. She threw in Beauchêne's face all the contempt and loathing that she had felt for him for years. Hopeless as she was, she revenged herself by telling him everything that she had on her heart and mind. And her slim dark figure, upborne by bitter rage, assumed such redoubtable proportions in his eyes that he felt frightened by her and fled. Henceforth they were husband and wife in name only. It was logic on the march, it was the inevitable disorganization of a household reaching its climax, it was rebellion against nature's law and indulgence in vice leading to the gradual decline of a man of intelligence, it was a hard worker sinking into the sloth of so-called pleasure; and then, death having snatched away the only son, the home broke to pieces—the wife—fated to childlessness, and the husband driven away by her, rolling through debauchery towards final ruin.
But Mathieu, keeping his promise to Constance, discreetly began his researches. And before he even consulted Beauchêne it occurred to him to apply at the Foundling Hospital. If, as he anticipated, the child were dead, the affair would go no further. Fortunately enough he remembered all the particulars: the two names, Alexandre-Honoré, given to the child, the exact date of the deposit at the hospital, indeed all the little incidents of the day when he had driven thither with La Couteau. And when he was received by the director of the establishment, and had explained to him the real motives of his inquiries, at the same time giving his name, he was surprised by the promptness and precision of the answer: Alexandre-Honoré, put out to nurse with the woman Loiseau at Rougemont, had first kept cows, and had then tried the calling of a locksmith; but for three months past he had been in apprenticeship with a wheelwright, a certain Montoir, residing at Saint-Pierre, a hamlet in the vicinity of Rougemont. Thus the lad lived; he was fifteen years old, and that was all. Mathieu could obtain no further information respecting either his physical health or his morality.
When Mathieu found himself in the street again, slightly dazed, he remembered that La Couteau had told him that the child would be sent to Rougemont. He had always pictured it dying there, carried off by the hurricane which killed so many babes, and lying in the silent village cemetery paved with little Parisians. To find the boy alive, saved from the massacre, came like a surprise of destiny, and brought vague anguish, a fear of some terrible catastrophe to Mathieu's heart. At the same time, since the boy was living, and he now knew where to seek him, he felt that he must warn Beauchêne. The matter was becoming serious, and it seemed to him that he ought not to carry the inquiry any further without the father's authorization.
That same day, then, before returning to Chantebled, he repaired to the factory, where he was lucky enough to find Beauchêne, whom Blaise's absence on business had detained there by force. Thus he was in a very bad humor, puffing and yawning and half asleep. It was nearly three o'clock, and he declared that he could never digest his lunch properly unless he went out afterwards. The truth was that since his rupture with his wife he had been devoting his afternoons to paying attentions to a girl serving at a beer-house.
"Ah! my good fellow," he muttered as he stretched himself. "My blood is evidently thickening. I must bestir myself, or else I shall be in a bad way."
However, he woke up when Mathieu had explained the motive of his visit. At first he could scarcely understand it, for the affair seemed to him so extraordinary, so idiotic.
"Eh? What do you say? It was my wife who spoke to you about that child? It is she who has taken it into her head to collect information and start a search?"
His fat apoplectical face became distorted, his anger was so violent that he could scarcely stutter. When he heard, however, of the mission with which his wife had intrusted Mathieu, he at last exploded: "She is mad! I tell you that she is raving mad! Were such fancies ever seen? Every morning she invents something fresh to distract me!"