too--her cherished revenge which she held in her hand, all ready for use,
and so unerring, so fierce!




CHAPTER XXII

THE NEW EMYLOYEE OF THE HOUSE OF FROMONT

It was broad daylight when Fromont Jeune awoke. All night long, between
the drama that was being enacted below him and the festivity in joyous
progress above, he slept with clenched fists, the deep sleep of complete
prostration like that of a condemned man on the eve of his execution or
of a defeated General on the night following his disaster; a sleep from
which one would wish never to awake, and in which, in the absence of all
sensation, one has a foretaste of death.

The bright light streaming through his curtains, made more dazzling by
the deep snow with which the garden and the surrounding roofs were
covered, recalled him to the consciousness of things as they were. He
felt a shock throughout his whole being, and, even before his mind began
to work, that vague impression of melancholy which misfortunes,
momentarily forgotten, leave in their place. All the familiar noises of
the factory, the dull throbbing of the machinery, were in full activity.
So the world still existed! and by slow degrees the idea of his own
responsibility awoke in him.

"To-day is the day," he said to himself, with an involuntary movement
toward the dark side of the room, as if he longed to bury himself anew in