Lazare had already calmed down, as though his last burst of passion had exhausted him.
'No, no!' he muttered, 'it would bore me too much. But you are right; there is nothing for one to make oneself angry about. Whether they're drowned or not, what does it matter to me?'
Silence fell again. Chanteau had fallen back into a posture of dolorous immobility after raising his head to receive his son's kiss. The priest was twirling his thumbs, and the Doctor paced about, with his hands behind his back. They all began to look at little Paul, whom Pauline defended even from his father's caresses, to prevent him from being wakened. Since the others had come she had begged them to lower their voices and not to tread so heavily about the rug, and she now shook a whip at Loulou, who still continued to growl at the noise he had heard when the horse was led to the stable.
'You don't suppose that that will quiet him, do you?' said Lazare. 'He'll make that row for an hour. He's the most disagreeable brute I ever came across. He begins to snarl directly one moves, and one might as well be without a dog at all, he is so completely absorbed in himself. The only good the sulky beast does is to make us regret our poor old Matthew.'
'How old is Minouche now?' Cazenove inquired. 'I have seen her about here as long as I can remember.'
'She is turned sixteen,' Pauline answered, 'and she keeps very well yet.'
Minouche, who was still at her toilet on the dining-room window-sill, raised her head as the Doctor pronounced her name. For a moment she held her foot suspended in the air, then again began to lick her fur delicately.
'She isn't deaf yet, you see,' Pauline said; 'but I fancy her sight is not so good as it was. It is scarcely a week ago since seven kittens of hers were drowned. It is really quite terrible to think of the number she has had during the last sixteen years. If they had all been allowed to live they would have eaten up the whole neighbourhood.'
'Well, well, she at any rate keeps neat and clean,' said the priest, glancing at Minouche as she continued washing herself with her tongue.
Chanteau, who, like the others, was looking towards the cat, now began to moan more loudly with that incessant involuntary expression of pain which had become so habitual to him that he had grown unconscious of it.