"Good-by!"

And with a heavy step, almost tottering, he went out.

The sun had risen, and lit up the trees in the garden. Nature seemed to
be making holiday. The flowers perfumed the air, and in the deep blue
sky swallows were flying to and fro. This earthly joy exasperated Madame
Desvarennes. She would have liked the world to be in mourning. She
closed the window hastily, and remained lost in her own reflections.

So everything was over! The great prosperity, the honor of the house,
everything was foundering in a moment. Even her daughter might escape
from her, and follow the infamous husband whom she adored in spite of his
faults--perhaps because of his very faults--and might drag on a weary
existence in a strange land, which would terminate in death.

For that sweet and delicate child could not live without material
comforts and mental ease, and her husband was doomed to go on from bad to
worse, and would drag her down with him! The mistress pictured her
daughter, that child whom she had brought up with the tenderest care,
dying on a pallet, and the husband, odious to the last, refusing her
admission to the room where Micheline was in agony.

A fearful feeling of anger overcame her. Her motherly love gained the
mastery, and in the silence of the room she roared out these words:

"That shall not be!"

The opening of the door recalled her to her senses, and she rose. It was
Marechal, greatly agitated. After Cayrol's arrival, not knowing what to