She remained lost in stupor, and having no more consciousness of herself than through the beating of her arteries, that she seemed to hear bursting forth like a deafening music filling all the fields.  The earth beneath her feet was more yielding than the sea, and the furrows seemed to her immense brown waves breaking into foam.  Everything in her head, of memories, ideas, went off at once like a thousand pieces of fireworks.  She saw her father, Lheureux’s closet, their room at home, another landscape.  Madness was coming upon her; she grew afraid, and managed to recover herself, in a confused way, it is true, for she did not in the least remember the cause of the terrible condition she was in, that is to say, the question of money.  She suffered only in her love, and felt her soul passing from her in this memory; as wounded men, dying, feel their life ebb from their bleeding wounds.

Night was falling, crows were flying about.

Suddenly it seemed to her that fiery spheres were exploding in the air like fulminating balls when they strike, and were whirling, whirling, to melt at last upon the snow between the branches of the trees.  In the midst of each of them appeared the face of Rodolphe.  They multiplied and drew near her, penetrating, her.  It all disappeared; she recognised the lights of the houses that shone through the fog.

Now her situation, like an abyss, rose up before her.  She was panting as if her heart would burst.  Then in an ecstasy of heroism, that made her almost joyous, she ran down the hill, crossed the cow-plank, the foot-path, the alley, the market, and reached the chemist’s shop.  She was about to enter, but at the sound of the bell someone might come, and slipping in by the gate, holding her breath, feeling her way along the walls, she went as far as the door of the kitchen, where a candle stuck on the stove was burning.  Justin in his shirt-sleeves was carrying out a dish.

“Ah! they are dining; I will wait.”

He returned; she tapped at the window.  He went out.

“The key! the one for upstairs where he keeps the—­”

“What?”

And he looked at her, astonished at the pallor of her face, that stood out white against the black background of the night.  She seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful and majestic as a phantom.  Without understanding what she wanted, he had the presentiment of something terrible.

But she went on quickly in a love voice; in a sweet, melting voice, “I want it; give it to me.”

As the partition wall was thin, they could hear the clatter of the forks on the plates in the dining-room.

She pretended that she wanted to kill the rats that kept her from sleeping.

“I must tell master.”

“No, stay!” Then with an indifferent air, “Oh, it’s not worth while; I’ll tell him presently.  Come, light me upstairs.”

She entered the corridor into which the laboratory door opened.  Against the wall was a key labelled Capharnaum.