“What is the good of it if there is no more love?” murmured Marianne.

“Then, too,” continued Mathieu, after a pause, “I went down to the Yeuse, and from a distance I saw that Gregoire had received the new machine which Denis has just built for him.  It was being unloaded in the yard.  It seems that it imparts a certain movement to the mill-stones, which saves a good third of the power needed.  With such appliances the earth may produce seas of corn for innumerable nations, they will all have bread.  And that mill-engine, with its regular breath and motion, will produce fresh wealth also.”

“What use is it if people hate one another?” Marianne exclaimed.

At this Mathieu dropped the subject.  But, in accordance with a resolution which he had formed during his walk, he told his wife that he meant to go to Paris on the morrow.  And on noticing her surprise, he pretended that he wished to see to a certain business matter, the settlement of an old account.  But the truth was, that he could no longer endure the spectacle of his wife’s lingering agony, which brought him so much suffering.  He wished to act, to make a supreme effort at reconciliation.

At ten o’clock on the following morning, when Mathieu alighted from the train at the Paris terminus, he drove direct to the factory at Grenelle.  Before everything else he wished to see Denis, who had hitherto taken no part in the quarrel.  For a long time now, indeed ever since Constance’s death, Denis had been installed in the house on the quay with his wife Marthe and their three children.  This occupation of the luxurious dwelling set apart for the master had been like a final entry into possession, with respect to the whole works.  True, Beauchene had lived several years longer, but his name no longer figured in that of the firm.  He had surrendered his last shred of interest in the business for an annuity; and at last one evening it was learnt that he had died that day, struck down by an attack of apoplexy after an over-copious lunch, at the residence of his lady-friends, the aunt and the niece.  He had previously been sinking into a state of second childhood, the outcome of his life of fast and furious pleasure.  And this, then, was the end of the egotistical debauchee, ever going from bad to worse, and finally swept into the gutter.

“Why! what good wind has blown you here?” cried Denis gayly, when he perceived his father.  “Have you come to lunch?  I’m still a bachelor, you know; for it is only next Monday that I shall go to fetch Marthe and the children from Dieppe, where they have spent a delightful September.”

Then, on hearing that his mother was ailing, even in danger, he become serious and anxious.

“Mamma ill, and in danger!  You amaze me.  I thought she was simply troubled with some little indisposition.  But come, father, what is really the matter?  Are you hiding something?  Is something worrying you?”