some mysterious rendering of worship to the dead who haunted him.  And at the works during the day which followed Morange gave alarming signs of distress, of the final sinking of his mind into a flood of gloom.  Ever darting troubled glances around him, he was tortured by internal combats, which, without the slightest motive, made him descend the stairs a dozen times, linger before the machinery in motion, and then return to his additions up above, with the bewildered, distracted air of one who could not find what he sought so painfully.  When the darkness fell, about four o’clock on that gloomy winter day, the two clerks whom he had with him in his office noticed that he altogether ceased working.  From that moment, indeed, he waited with his eyes fixed upon the clock.  And when five o’clock struck he once more made sure that a certain total was correct, then rose and went out, leaving the ledger open, as if he meant to return to check the next addition.

He followed the gallery which led to the passage connecting the workshops with the private house.  The whole factory was at that hour lighted up, electric lamps cast the brightness of daylight over it, while the stir of work ascended and the walls shook amid the rumbling of machinery.  And all at once, before reaching the passage, Morange perceived the lift, the terrible cavity, the abyss of murder in which Blaise had met his death fourteen years previously.  Subsequent to that catastrophe, and in order to prevent the like of it from ever occurring again, the trap had been surrounded by a balustrade with a gate, in such wise that a fall became impossible unless one should open the gate expressly to take a plunge.  At that moment the trap was lowered and the gate was closed, and Morange, yielding to some superior force, bent over the cavity, shuddering.  The whole scene of long ago rose up before him; he was again in the depths of that frightful void; he could see the crushed corpse; and he could feel the gust of terror chilling him in the presence of murder, accepted and concealed.  Since he suffered so dreadfully, since he could no longer sleep, since he had promised his dear dead ones that he would join them, why should he not make an end of himself?  Two days previously, while leaning over the parapet of the Grenelle bridge, a desire to do so had taken possession of him.  He merely had to lose his equilibrium and he would be liberated, laid to rest in the peaceful earth between his wife and his daughter.  And, all at once, as if the abyss itself suggested to him the frightful solution for which he had been vainly groping, in his growing madness, for two days past, he thought that he could hear a voice calling him from below, the voice of Blaise, which cried:  “Come with the other one!  Come with the other one!”

He started violently and drew himself erect; decision had fallen on him in a lightning flash.  Insane as he was, that appeared to him to be the one sole logical, mathematical, sensible solution, which would settle everything.  It seemed to him so simple, too, that he was astonished that he had sought it so long.  And from that moment this poor soft-hearted weakling, whose wretched brain was unhinged, gave proof of iron will and sovereign heroism, assisted by the clearest reasoning, the most subtle craft.