At that moment the recruit made a noise in the room above by sitting
down to his supper.

"I cannot stay here!" cried Madame de Dey. "I will go into the
greenhouse; there I can hear what happens outside during the night."

She still floated between the fear of having lost her son and the hope
of his suddenly appearing.

The night was horribly silent. There was one dreadful moment for the
countess, when the battalion of recruits passed through the town, and
went to their several billets. Every step, every sound, was a hope,
--and a lost hope. After that the stillness continued. Towards morning
the countess was obliged to return to her room. Brigitte, who watched
her movements, was uneasy when she did not reappear, and entering the
room she found her dead.

"She must have heard that recruit walking about Monsieur Auguste's
room, and singing their damned Marseillaise, as if he were in a
stable," cried Brigitte. "That was enough to kill her!"

The death of the countess had a far more solemn cause; it resulted, no
doubt, from an awful vision. At the exact hour when Madame de Dey died
at Carentan, her son was shot in the Morbihan. That tragic fact may be
added to many recorded observations on sympathies that are known to
ignore the laws of space: records which men of solitude are collecting
with far-seeing curiosity, and which will some day serve as the basis
of a new science for which, up to the present time, a man of genius
has been lacking.