The whole house seemed to be penetrated by the cold; the very walls
seemed to be shivering, and Jeanne shivered in her bed. Twice she got
up to put fresh logs on the fire and to look for dresses, skirts, and
other garments which she piled on the bed. Nothing seemed to warm her;
her feet were numbed and her lower limbs seemed to tingle, making her
excessively nervous and restless.
Then her teeth began to chatter, her hands shook, there was a
tightness in her chest, her heart began to beat with hard, dull
pulsations, and at times seemed to stop beating, and she gasped for
breath. A terrible apprehension seized her, while the cold seemed to
penetrate to her marrow. She never had felt such a sensation, she had
never seemed to lose her hold on life like this before, never been so
near her last breath.
"I am going to die," she thought, "I am dying----"
And filled with terror, she jumped out of bed, rang for Rosalie,
waited, rang again, waited again, shivering and frozen.
The little maid did not come. She was doubtless asleep, that first,
sound sleep that nothing can disturb. Jeanne, in despair, darted
toward the stairs in her bare feet, and groping her way, she ascended
the staircase quietly, found the door, opened it, and called,
"Rosalie!" She went forward, stumbled against the bed, felt all over
it with her hands and found that it was empty. It was empty and cold,
and as if no one had slept there. Much surprised, she said: "What! Has
she gone out in weather like this?"
But as her heart began to beat tumultuously till she seemed to be
suffocating, she went downstairs again with trembling limbs in order
to wake Julien. She rushed into his room filled with the idea that she
was going to die, and longing to see him before she lost
consciousness.
By the light of the dying embers she perceived Rosalie's head leaning
on her husband's shoulder.
At the cry she gave they both started to their feet; she stood
motionless for a second, horrified at this discovery, and then fled to
her room; and when Julien, at his wit's end, called "Jeanne!" she was
seized with an overmastering terror of seeing him, of hearing his
voice, of listening to him explaining, lying, of meeting his gaze; and
she darted toward the stairs again and went down.
She now ran along in the darkness, at the risk of falling downstairs,
at the risk of breaking her neck on the stone floor of the hall. She
rushed along, impelled by an imperious desire to flee, to know nothing
about it, to see no one.
When she was at the bottom of the stairs she sat down on one of the
steps, still in her nightdress, and in bare feet, and remained in a
dazed condition. She heard Julien moving and walking about. She
started to her feet in order to escape him. He was starting to come
downstairs and called: "Listen, Jeanne!"