have people think. They were without news from
the sick-room.

"Is he dead?" Jansoulet wondered as he left the club, and he was
conscious of an impulse to go and see before returning home. It was no
longer hope that impelled him, but that unhealthy, nervous sort of
curiosity which attracts the poor, ruined, shelterless victims of a
conflagration to the debris of their home.

Although it was still very early, the pink flush of dawn still lingering
in the air, the whole mansion was open as if for a solemn departure. The
lamps were still smoking on the mantels, the air was filled with dust.
The Nabob walked on through inexplicable solitude as far as the first
floor, where he at last heard a familiar voice, Cardailhac's, dictating
names, and the scratching of pens on paper. The skilful organizer of the
fetes for the bey was arranging with the same zeal the funeral
ceremonial of the Duc de Mora. Such activity! His Excellency had died
during the evening; in the morning ten thousand letters were already
printed, and everybody in the house who knew how to hold a pen was busy
with the addresses. Without passing through those extemporized offices,
Jansoulet made his way to the reception-room, usually so thronged,
to-day all the chairs empty. In the centre of the room, on a table, lay
Monsieur le Duc's hat and gloves and cane, always ready in the event of
his going out unexpectedly, to save him the trouble of an order. The
articles that we wear retain something of ourselves. The curve of the
hat-rim recalled the curl of the moustaches, the light gloves were ready
to grasp the flexible, strong Chinese bamboo, everything seemed to
quiver and live, as if the duke were about to appear, to put out his
hand as he talked, take them up and go out.

Oh! no, Monsieur le Duc was not going out. Jansoulet had only to walk to
the bedroom door, which stood ajar, to see lying on the bed, three steps
above the floor--the same platform even after death--a rigid, haughty
form, a motionless, aged profile, transformed by the gray beard that had
grown in a night; kneeling against the sloping pillow, her face buried
in the white sheets, was a woman whose fair hair fell neglected about
her shoulders, ready to fall under the shears of eternal widowhood; a
priest, too, and a nun stood absorbed in meditation in that atmosphere
of the death vigil, wherein the weariness of sleepless nights is blended
with the mumbling of prayers and whispering in the shadow