oom. The disordered chairs themselves seemed affrighted, as if
they had run, in all the senses of the word. Death, the formidable, was
there, hidden, waiting.

The story of the two sisters was very touching. It was quoted far and
wide; it had made many eyes to weep.

Suzanne, the elder, had once been madly in love with a young man, who
had also been in love with her. They were engaged, and were only
waiting the day fixed for the contract, when Henry de Lampierre
suddenly died.

The despair of the young girl was dreadful, and she vowed that she
would never marry. She kept her word. She put on widow's weeds, which
she never took off.

Then her sister, her little sister Marguerite, who was only twelve
years old, came one morning to throw herself into the arms of the
elder, and said: "Big Sister, I do not want thee to be unhappy. I do
not want thee to cry all thy life. I will never leave thee, never,
never! I--I, too, shall never marry. I shall stay with thee always,
always, always!"

Suzanne, touched by the devotion of the child, kissed her, but did not
believe.

Yet the little one, also, kept her word, and despite the entreaties of
her parents, despite the supplications of the elder, she never married.
She was pretty, very pretty; she refused many a young man who seemed to
love her truly; and she never left her sister more.

* * * * *

They lived together all the days of their life, without ever being
separated a single time. They went side by side, inseparably united.
But Marguerite seemed always sad, oppressed, more melancholy than the
elder, as though perhaps her sublime sacrifice had broken her spirit.
She aged more quickly, had white hair from the age of thirty, and often
suffering, seemed afflicted by some secret, gnawing trouble.

Now she was to be the first to die.

Since yesterday she was no longer able to speak. She had only said, at
the first glimmers of day-dawn:

"Go fetch Monsieur le Cure, the moment has come."

And she had remained since then upon her back, shaken with spasms, her
lips agitated as though dreadful words were mounting from her heart
without power of issue, her look mad with fear, terrible to see.

Her sister, torn by sorrow, wept wildly, her forehead resting on the
edge of the bed, and kept repeating:

"Margot, my poor Margot, my little one!"

She had always called her, "Little One," just as the younger had always
called her "Big Sister."