“Well, the chief thing is to enjoy good health.  One can wait for better days.”

“Oh! nobody enjoys good health; still one waits all the same.”

And now one evening, at the end of the twelve years, as Morange went in to see her, he detected that the atmosphere of the little drawing-room was changed, quivering as it were with restrained delight amid the eternal silence.

“Nothing fresh since yesterday, dear madame?”

“Yes, my friend, there’s something fresh.”

“Something favorable I hope, then; something pleasant that you have been waiting for?”

“Something that I have been waiting for—­yes!  What one knows how to wait for always comes.”

He looked at her in surprise, feeling almost anxious when he saw how altered she was, with glittering eyes and quick gestures.  What fulfilment of her desires, after so many years of immutable mourning, could have resuscitated her like that?  She smiled, she breathed vigorously, as if she were relieved of the enormous weight which had so long crushed and immured her.  But when he asked the cause of her great happiness she said: 

“I will not tell you yet, my friend.  Perhaps I do wrong to rejoice; for everything is still very vague and doubtful.  Only somebody told me this morning certain things, which I must make sure of, and think over.  When I have done so I shall confide in you, you may rely on it, for I tell you everything; besides which, I shall no doubt need your help.  So have a little patience, some evening you shall come to dinner with me here, and we shall have the whole evening before us to chat at our ease.  But ah! mon Dieu! if it were only true, if it were only the miracle at last!”

More than three weeks elapsed before Morange heard anything further.  He saw that Constance was very thoughtful and very feverish, but he did not even question her, absorbed as he himself was in the solitary, not to say automatic, life which he had made for himself.  He had lately completed his sixty-ninth year; thirty years had gone by since the death of his wife Valerie, more than twenty since his daughter Reine had joined her, and he still ever lived on in his methodical, punctual manner, amid the downfall of his existence.  Never had man suffered more than he, passed through greater tragedies, experienced keener remorse, and withal he came and went in a careful, correct way, ever and ever prolonging his career of mediocrity, like one whom many may have forgotten, but whom keenness of grief has preserved.

Nevertheless Morange had evidently sustained some internal damage of a nature to cause anxiety.  He was lapsing into the most singular manias.  While obstinately retaining possession of the over-large flat which he had formerly occupied with his wife and daughter, he now lived there absolutely alone; for he had dismissed his servant, and did his own marketing, cooking, and cleaning.  For ten years