Jules, indeed, had need of this day.  He went to Monsieur de Maulincour to demand the satisfaction agreed upon between them.  It was not without great difficulty that he succeeded in reaching the presence of the author of these misfortunes; but the vidame, when he learned that the visit related to an affair of honor, obeyed the precepts of his whole life, and himself took Jules into the baron’s chamber.

Monsieur Desmarets looked about him in search of his antagonist.

“Yes! that is really he,” said the vidame, motioning to a man who was sitting in an arm-chair beside the fire.

“Who is it?  Jules?” said the dying man in a broken voice.

Auguste had lost the only faculty that makes us live—­memory.  Jules Desmarets recoiled with horror at this sight.  He could not even recognize the elegant young man in that thing without—­as Bossuet said—­a name in any language.  It was, in truth, a corpse with whitened hair, its bones scarce covered with a wrinkled, blighted, withered skin,—­a corpse with white eyes motionless, mouth hideously gaping, like those of idiots or vicious men killed by excesses.  No trace of intelligence remained upon that brow, nor in any feature; nor was there in that flabby flesh either color or the faintest appearance of circulating blood.  Here was a shrunken, withered creature brought to the state of those monsters we see preserved in museums, floating in alchohol.  Jules fancied that he saw above that face the terrible head of Ferragus, and his own anger was silenced by such a vengeance.  The husband found pity in his heart for the vacant wreck of what was once a man.

“The duel has taken place,” said the vidame.

“But he has killed many,” answered Jules, sorrowfully.

“And many dear ones,” added the old man.  “His grandmother is dying; and I shall follow her soon into the grave.”

On the morrow of this day, Madame Jules grew worse from hour to hour.  She used a moment’s strength to take a letter from beneath her pillow, and gave it eagerly to her husband with a sign that was easy to understand,—­she wished to give him, in a kiss, her last breath.  He took it, and she died.  Jules fell half-dead himself and was taken to his brother’s house.  There, as he deplored in tears his absence of the day before, his brother told him that this separation was eagerly desired by Clemence, who wished to spare him the sight of the religious paraphernalia, so terrible to tender imaginations, which the Church displays when conferring the last sacraments upon the dying.

“You could not have borne it,” said his brother.  “I could hardly bear the sight myself, and all the servants wept.  Clemence was like a saint.  She gathered strength to bid us all good-bye, and that voice, heard for the last time, rent our hearts.  When she asked pardon for the pain she might unwillingly have caused her servants, there were cries and sobs and—­”

“Enough! enough!” said Jules.