“Here’s Madame,” said Zoe, returning.  She must have espied her through the bedroom window.

There was a sound of people racing through the house, and laughter died away and doors were shut.  Georges heard Nana paying the baker and speaking in the curtest way.  Then she came upstairs.

“What, you’re here still!” she said as she noticed him.  “Aha!  We’re going to grow angry, my good man!”

He followed her as she walked toward her bedroom.

“Nana, will you marry me?”

She shrugged her shoulders.  It was too stupid; she refused to answer any more and conceived the idea of slamming the door in his face.

“Nana, will you marry me?”

She slammed the door.  He opened it with one hand while he brought the other and the scissors out of his pocket.  And with one great stab he simply buried them in his breast.

Nana, meanwhile, had felt conscious that something dreadful would happen, and she had turned round.  When she saw him stab himself she was seized with indignation.

“Oh, what a fool he is!  What a fool!  And with my scissors!  Will you leave off, you naughty little rogue?  Oh, my God!  Oh, my God!”

She was scared.  Sinking on his knees, the boy had just given himself a second stab, which sent him down at full length on the carpet.  He blocked the threshold of the bedroom.  With that Nana lost her head utterly and screamed with all her might, for she dared not step over his body, which shut her in and prevented her from running to seek assistance.

“Zoe!  Zoe!  Come at once.  Make him leave off.  It’s getting stupid—­a child like that!  He’s killing himself now!  And in my place too!  Did you ever see the like of it?”

He was frightening her.  He was all white, and his eyes were shut.  There was scarcely any bleeding—­only a little blood, a tiny stain which was oozing down into his waistcoat.  She was making up her mind to step over the body when an apparition sent her starting back.  An old lady was advancing through the drawing-room door, which remained wide open opposite.  And in her terror she recognized Mme Hugon but could not explain her presence.  Still wearing her gloves and hat, Nana kept edging backward, and her terror grew so great that she sought to defend herself, and in a shaky voice: 

“Madame,” she cried, “it isn’t I; I swear to you it isn’t.  He wanted to marry me, and I said no, and he’s killed himself!”

Slowly Mme Hugon drew near—­she was in black, and her face showed pale under her white hair.  In the carriage, as she drove thither, the thought of Georges had vanished and that of Philippe’s misdoing had again taken complete possession of her.  It might be that this woman could afford explanations to the judges which would touch them, and so she conceived the project of begging her to bear witness in her son’s favor.  Downstairs the doors of the house stood open, but as she mounted to the first floor her sick feet failed her, and she was hesitating as to which way to go when suddenly horror-stricken cries directed her.  Then upstairs she found a man lying on the floor with bloodstained shirt.  It was Georges—­it was her other child.