However, the sight of La Cognette in the distance, flying wildly across the yard, thrilled him with an uneasy feeling of disquietude. Eleven o'clock was striking as he arrived, and some hours earlier a frightful catastrophe had happened. That morning, on coming down before the servant-girl, La Cognette had found the cellar trap-door—that trap-door situated so dangerously near the staircase—open, and Hourdequin lying below quite dead, with his back broken against the edge of a step. The young woman shrieked, the servants rushed up, and the whole place was overwhelmed with panic. The farmer's body was now lying on a mattress in the dining-room, while Jacqueline was in the kitchen fairly off her nut, with her face distorted but tearless.
As soon as Jean entered, she broke out, relieving herself in a choking voice:
"I said it would be so! and I tried to get the trap altered! But who could it be that left it open? I'm positive it was closed last night when I went upstairs to bed. I've been racking my head all the morning in trying to make it out."
"The master came down before you did, then?" asked Jean, quite stupefied by the accident.
"Yes, it was scarcely light, and I was asleep; I fancied I heard some one calling from downstairs, but I may have dreamt it. He frequently got up in this way and went downstairs without a light to see the servants as soon as they turned out. He could not see that the trap was open, and he fell. But who can have left it open? Oh, this will be the death of me, it will!"
Jean had felt a passing suspicion, but he at once thrust it away from him. Jacqueline could have no possible interest in Hourdequin's death, and her grief was evidently sincere.
"It is a terrible misfortune," he murmured.
"Yes, indeed; a terrible misfortune for me, a terrible one!"
Then she fell down on a chair, completely overcome, as though the very walls were toppling over upon her. The master, whose legitimate wife she had so confidently reckoned on becoming! The master, who had sworn to leave her everything in his will! And now he was dead, dead before he had had time to sign a single paper! She would not even get any wages; the son would come back and kick her out of the house as he had threatened to do! She would have nothing but the few ornaments and the clothes she wore! It was ruin, disastrous and complete!