"My heart is palpitating dreadfully," exclaimed Fanny. "How stupid of me!"
Then they called out to Madame Bécu, who happened to be passing. She had been to the church again, and was now wandering backwards and forwards like a disembodied spirit. Her trouble was so great that she did not even stop to talk.
"I can't contain myself any longer; I'm going to meet them!" said she.
Jean was standing in front of the window, gazing vaguely out of it, and paying no attention to the women's talk. Several times since the morning he had seen old Fouan prowling round the house with his dragging gait. He now suddenly caught sight of him again, pressing his face against one of the panes of glass, and trying to make out what was going on inside the room. Jean thereupon opened the window, and the old man, looking quite stupefied, began to ask in stammering tones how Françoise was. Very bad, Jean told him; in fact, it was all over with her. Then Fouan thrust his head in at the open window, and stood gazing at Françoise for such a long time that it almost seemed as though he were unable to go away. When Fanny and La Grande saw him, they returned to their previous idea of sending for Lise. But when they tried to get the old fellow to fetch her, he shivered with alarm and made his escape. He muttered and repeated over and over again:
"No, no; impossible, impossible!"
Jean seemed struck by the old man's appearance of terror; however, the women let the matter drop. After all, it only concerned the two sisters, and it was no business of theirs to force them to see and kiss each other. At this moment a sound was heard, feeble at first, and like the droning of a big fly; then it grew louder and louder, rolling along like a gust of wind breaking among trees.
Fanny leaped up excitedly.
"The drum!" she cried. "Here they come! Good evening!"
And thereupon she hurried away, without even giving her cousin a last kiss.
La Grande and La Frimat also left the room and went to look out at the door. Only Françoise and Jean were left: the wife still persisting in her obstinate silence and rigidity, hearing, perhaps, everything that was said, but wishing to die, like some wild animal earthed-up at the bottom of its burrow; the husband standing in front of the open window, racked by uncertainty, and overwhelmed by a troubled grief to which everything seemed to contribute. Ah, that drum! how the sound of it vibrated and echoed through his whole being. And as its roll broke ceaselessly through the air, with his grief of to-day there mingled recollections of the past, of barracks and battles, and of the dog's life led by poor wretches who had neither wife nor child to love them!