The illness worsened. One evening the doctor let it be known that the patient would not last the night. Mme Sidonie had come early, looking preoccupied, and stared at Aristide and Angèle with watery eyes illuminated by brief flashes of fire. After the doctor left, she turned down the lamp, and deep silence ensued. Death slowly made its way into the hot, humid room, which the dying woman’s irregular breathing filled with a syncopated ticking like that of a clock about to run down. Mme Sidonie had given up on her potions, allowing the disease to do its work. She sat down in front of the fireplace next to her brother, who poked feverishly at the fire while casting involuntary glances at the bed. Then, as if overwhelmed by the heavy atmosphere and the distressing spectacle, he withdrew into the adjacent room. Little Clotilde, who had been left there, was sitting on a rug and playing very quietly with her doll. Saccard’s daughter smiled at him, but just then Mme Sidonie slipped into the room behind him and drew him off to a corner, where she spoke to him in a low voice. The door remained open, and a faint rattle could be heard in Angèle’s throat.
“Your poor wife,” the businesswoman sobbed. “I think the end is near. You heard the doctor?”
Saccard made no reply other than to bow his head in a mournful manner.
“She was a good woman,” his sister continued, speaking as though Angèle were already dead. “You can find women who are wealthier and more familiar with the ways of the world, but you’ll never find a heart like hers.”
Then she stopped and, wiping her eyes, seemed to be casting about for a way to change the subject. “Do you have something to say to me?” Saccard asked bluntly.
“Yes, I’ve been looking after your interests in regard to the matter we were discussing, and I think I’ve found . . . But at a time like this . . . My heart is breaking, you know.”
She wiped her eyes once more. Saccard, maintaining his composure, let her run through her act without saying a word. Finally she made up her mind to come right out with it: “There’s a young woman whose family would like to find her a husband immediately. The dear child finds herself in trouble. There’s an aunt who would be willing to make a sacrifice. . . .”
She cut herself short, still whimpering, her voice still tearful as though out of pity for poor Angèle. This was a way of making her brother impatient and compelling him to question her, so that she would not bear sole responsibility for the offer she had come to make. The clerk was indeed smoldering with irritation.
“Come on, finish what you were saying! Why do they want to find a husband for this girl?”
“She’s just out of boarding school,” the businesswoman rejoined in a plaintive voice. “She was visiting the country house of the parents of one of her friends when a man led her astray. The girl’s father learned of her crime only recently. He wanted her dead. To save the dear child, her aunt persuaded her to tell her father a tall tale. They’ve convinced him that the guilty party is an honorable young fellow who asks only to be allowed to atone for his momentary lapse.”
“So?” asked Saccard in a tone of surprise and apparent annoyance. “This fellow from the country is going to marry the girl?”
“No, he can’t. He’s already married.”
For a while nothing was said. Angèle’s rattle made a more doleful sound in the shivering air. Little Clotilde had stopped playing with her doll. She looked at Mme Sidonie and her father with her big, dreamy child’s eyes, as if she had understood their conversation. Saccard put a series of short questions to his sister:
“How old is the girl?”
“Nineteen.”
“Pregnant for how long?”
“Three months. There will no doubt be a miscarriage.”
“And the family is rich and respectable?”
“Old bourgeoisie. The father was a magistrate. A very nice fortune.”
“How much is the aunt willing to sacrifice?”
“A hundred thousand francs.”
Another silence ensued. Mme Sidonie had stopped weeping. She was doing business now, and her voice took on the metallic sound of a secondhand dealer haggling over a sale. Her brother looked at her with a sidelong glance and, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “And you? What do you want out of it?”
“We’ll see about that later,” she replied. “Someday you’ll do me a favor.”
She waited a few seconds, and then, since he said nothing, put it to him directly. “So, what have you decided? These poor women are desperate. They’re trying to avoid a scene. They’ve promised to tell the girl’s father the guilty man’s name tomorrow. . . . If you agree, I’ll send a messenger to them with your card.”
Saccard seemed to awaken from a dream. Thinking he heard a faint noise from the bedroom next door, he winced and turned in fright toward the source of the sound. “But I can’t,” he said in great distress, “you know very well that I can’t.”
Mme Sidonie fixed him with a cold and disdainful stare. All the Rougon blood in his veins, all his ardent desires, rushed to his head. He took a card from his wallet and gave it to his sister, who thrust it into an envelope after carefully scratching out the address. Then she went out. It was just past nine o’clock.
Saccard, left alone, went to the window and leaned his forehead against the frosted pane. Unconsciously he drummed the glass with his fingertips. But the night was so dark, the shadows outside hulked in such peculiar shapes, that he felt ill at ease and unthinkingly returned to the room in which Angèle lay dying. He had forgotten her, and it came as a horrible shock to find her sitting propped up against the pillows. Her eyes were wide open, and life seemed to have flooded back into her cheeks and lips. Little Clotilde, still clutching her doll, had sat down on the edge of the bed. The moment her father’s back was turned, she had hastily slipped into the bedroom from which she had been banished earlier, drawn there by the childish curiosity that was the source of all her joy. Saccard, his head still filled with his sister’s story, saw his dream dashed. A dreadful thought must have glared in his eyes. Angèle, seized by terror, tried to shrink back into the bed, pressing herself against the wall; but death had arrived, and this awakening in the throes of agony was only the final flaring up of the lamp before it went out for good. The dying woman could not move. She collapsed, still staring at her husband with wide-open eyes, as if to follow his movements. Saccard, who for a moment thought that fate had contrived some diabolical resurrection in order to keep him mired in misery, felt reassured on seeing that the wretched woman would be dead within the hour. Now all he felt was an intolerable malaise. Angèle’s eyes told him that she had overheard his conversation with Mme Sidonie and was afraid he would strangle her if she did not die quickly enough. Her eyes also expressed the horrified amazement of a sweet and inoffensive nature in its final hour recognizing the world’s infamy and shuddering at the thought of having spent long years at the side of a bandit. Little by little her eyes softened. She was no longer afraid, and she must have taken her wretched husband’s long and unremitting struggle against fate as the basis of an excuse. Saccard, pursued by the dying woman’s stare, which he read as a reproach, leaned against the furniture and groped for the shadows. Then, feeling faint, he sought to banish the nightmare that was driving him mad and advanced into the light. But Angèle motioned to him not to speak. She continued to stare at him with a look of terrified anguish, now mixed with a promise of forgiveness. At that point he bent down to take Clotilde in his arms and carry her into the other room. With a movement of her lips Angèle stopped him from doing this as well. She insisted that he remain with her. She went gently, without taking her eyes off him, and the paler he grew, the gentler her gaze became. Forgiveness came with her final sigh. She died as she had lived, softly, diffident in death as she had been in life. Saccard stood trembling before those lifeless eyes, which remained open and, inert though they now were, continued to pursue him. Little Clotilde rocked her doll gently on the edge of the sheet so as not to wake her mother.