That evening he was seized with intense fever, and Boutan was hastily summoned.  On the morrow, alarmed, though he scarcely dared to say it, by the lightning-like progress of the illness, the doctor insisted on a consultation, and two of his colleagues being summoned, they soon agreed together.  The malady was an extremely infectious form of galloping consumption, the more violent since it had found in the patient a field where there was little to resist its onslaught.  Beauchene was away from home, travelling as usual.  Constance, for her part, in spite of the grave mien of the doctors, who could not bring themselves to tell her the brutal truth, remained, in spite of growing anxiety, full of a stubborn hope that her son, the hero, the demi-god necessary for her own life, could not be seriously ill and likely to die.  But only three days elapsed, and during the very night that Beauchene returned home, summoned by a telegram, the young fellow expired in her arms.

In reality his death was simply the final decomposition of impoverished, tainted, bourgeois blood, the sudden disappearance of a poor, mediocre being who, despite a facade of seeming health, had been ailing since childhood.  But what an overwhelming blow it was both for the mother and for the father, all whose dreams and calculations it swept away!  The only son, the one and only heir, the prince of industry, whom they had desired with such obstinate, scheming egotism, had passed away like a shadow; their arms clasped but a void, and the frightful reality arose before them; a moment had sufficed, and they were childless.

Blaise was with the parents at the bedside at the moment when Maurice expired.  It was then about two in the morning, and as soon as possible he telegraphed the news of the death to Chantebled.  Nine o’clock was striking when Marianne, very pale, quite upset, came into the yard to call Mathieu.

“Maurice is dead! . . . Mon Dieu! an only son; poor people!”

They stood there thunderstruck, chilled and trembling.  They had simply heard that the young man was poorly; they had not imagined him to be seriously ill.

“Let me go to dress,” said Mathieu; “I shall take the quarter-past ten o’clock train.  I must go to kiss them.”

Although Marianne was expecting her eleventh child before long, she decided to accompany her husband.  It would have pained her to be unable to give this proof of affection to her cousins, who, all things considered, had treated Blaise and his young wife very kindly.  Moreover, she was really grieved by the terrible catastrophe.  So she and her husband, after distributing the day’s work among the servants, set out for Janville station, which they reached just in time to catch the quarter-past ten o’clock train.  It was already rolling on again when they recognized the Lepailleurs and their son Antonin in the very compartment where they were seated.

Seeing the Froments thus together in full dress, the miller imagined that they were going to a wedding, and when he learnt that they had a visit of condolence to make, he exclaimed:  “Oh! so it’s just the contrary.  But no matter, it’s an outing, a little diversion nevertheless.”