"And my wages, monsieur le procureur; who will pay them?"
"I will pay everything to-morrow," replied Marcel, who was accustomed to that blending of sentiment and practicalness which is always noticeable in such disasters; "have all the household accounts prepared, and meanwhile take the keys. You will be responsible for everything until to-morrow."
"Very good, monsieur, I will be responsible," said the maid, beginning to sob afresh; "but are we to leave madame's service? will madame not return?"
"I did not say that, and I have received no orders to dismiss you."
Marcel wrote to his wife that he had no time for dinner or supper, and that she need not expect him until ten or eleven o'clock at night. He returned to the convent. Julie had exhausted all her vitality in tears. She had risen again, she had bathed her pale face, streaked with the fire of tears, in cold water. She was calm, downcast, and resembled a living corpse. She revived a little when she learned that Marcel had succeeded in deceiving Julien, and in inducing him to accept, without undue suspicion, the comparative affluence which Monsieur Antoine bestowed on his mother and him. She wrote a note to Monsieur Antoine at Marcel's dictation, pledging herself never to see Julien again during her life, on condition that Julien should never be deprived of the house at Sèvres or the annuity. She would not make a similar stipulation concerning her own fortune, and Marcel dared not speak to her as yet of accepting Monsieur Antoine's discharge of her debts. She made no complaint; she was thoroughly exhausted, and Marcel, as he shook hands with her, felt that she was feverish. He persuaded her to see Sister Sainte-Juste, his cousin, and he urged the sister to have someone sleep in the next room. He did not go away until he had, with the solicitude of a father, seen everything arranged as he wished.
Julie passed a quiet night; hers was not one of those obstinate natures which struggle for a long time. Her conscience told her that she had done her duty, and the first suffering was so sudden and violent that she soon yielded to exhaustion and slept. The next morning she thanked the nun who had passed the night with her, and asked to be left alone. She dressed herself and arranged her hair, and, realizing that she was very awkward and unskilful in waiting on herself, she determined to conquer her habits, to put her room to rights and make her bed, arrange her clothes, and establish herself in that poor cell as if she were to pass her life there. She did all this mechanically, without effort and without reflection. When it was done, she sat down, clasped her hands about her knee, and looked out through the open window but saw nothing, listened to the convent bells but heard nothing, and did not dare think of eating, although she had taken nothing for twenty-four hours. If lightning had struck in the middle of her room it would not have startled her.
About noon, Sister Sainte-Juste found her in this state of listless contemplation, which she mistook for a beatific reverie. Some broken hearts are still so sweet and gentle that one does not suspect their suffering; but the sister had noticed, as she passed through the room used as an antechamber and dining-room, that the breakfast brought by the servant had grown cold untouched.
"Did you forget to eat?" she asked Julie.
"No, sister," replied the poor unhappy creature, who did not choose to allow herself to be pitied, "I was waiting for my appetite to come."
The nun urged her to eat, obligingly waited on her, and thought to divert her mind by her harmless, unmeaning chatter. Julie listened with inexhaustible good humor, and carried mental submission so far as to seem interested in all the minutiæ of that recluse's life, all the details of the regulations of the convent, all the dull little events which occupied the leisure of the community. What did she care whether she heard that or something else? It was no longer in the power of anyone to annoy or tire her. She was like an empty heart through which everything passes and in which nothing remains.