At the back of the cold downstairs room a fire has been lighted.  Mame is sitting on the stool beside it, in the glow of the flaming coal, outstretching her hands, clinging to the warmth.

Entering, I see the bowl of her back.  Her lean neck has a cracked look and is white as a bone.  Musingly, my aunt takes and holds a pair of idle tongs.  I take my seat.  Mame does not like the silence in which I wrap myself.  She lets the tongs fall with a jangling shock, and then begins vivaciously to talk to me about the people of the neighborhood.  “There’s everything here.  No need to go to Paris, nor even so much as abroad.  This part; it’s a little world cut out on the pattern of the others,” she adds, proudly, wagging her worn-out head.  “There aren’t many of them who’ve got the wherewithal and they’re not of much account.  Puppets, if you like, yes.  That’s according to how one sees it, because at bottom there’s no puppets,—­there’s people that look after themselves, because each of us always deserves to be happy, my lad.  And here, the same as everywhere, the two kinds of people that there are—­the discontented and the respectable; because, my lad, what’s always been always will be.”

CHAPTER III

EVENING AND DAWN

Just at the moment when I was settling down to audit the Sesmaisons’ account—­I remember that detail—­there came an unusual sound of steps and voices, and before I could even turn round I heard a voice through the glass door say, “Monsieur Paulin’s aunt is very ill.”

The sentence stuns me.  I am standing, and some one is standing opposite me.  A draught shuts the door with a bang.

Both of us set off.  It is Benoit who has come to fetch me.  We hurry.  I breathe heavily.  Crossing the busy factory, we meet acquaintances who smile at me, not knowing the turn of affairs.

The night is cold and nasty, with a keen wind.  The sky drips with rain.  We jump over puddles as we walk.  I stare fixedly at Benoit’s square shoulders in front of me, and the dancing tails of his coat as the wind hustles them along the nocturnal way.

Passing through the suburban quarter, the wind comes so hard between the infrequent houses that the bushes on either side shiver and press towards us, and seem to unfurl.  Ah, we are not made for the greater happenings!

* * * * * *

I meet first in the room the resounding glare of a wood fire and an almost repelling heat.  The odors of camphor and ether catch my throat.  People that I know are standing round the bed.  They turn to me and speak all together.

I bend down to look at Mame.  She is inlaid upon the whiteness of the bed, which is motionless as marble.  Her face is sunk in the cavity of the pillow.  Her eyes are half closed and do not move; her skin has darkened.  Each breath hums in her throat, and beyond that slight stirring of larynx and lips her little frail body moves no more than a doll’s.  She has not got her cap on and her gray hair is unraveled on her head like flocks of dust.