of horror that ascended to her
throat, and curse the murderers of her son, she would have suffered
less. But, after hearing and understanding everything, she was forced
to remain motionless and mute, inwardly preserving all the glare of her
grief.

It seemed to her that Therese and Laurent had bound her, riveted her to
her armchair to prevent her springing up, and that they took atrocious
pleasure in repeating to her, after gagging her to stifle her cries--

"We have killed Camille!"

Terror and anguish coursed furiously in her body unable to find an
issue. She made superhuman efforts to raise the weight crushing her, to
clear her throat and thus give passage to her flood of despair. In vain
did she strain her final energy; she felt her tongue cold against her
palate, she could not tear herself from death. Cadaverous impotence held
her rigid. Her sensations resembled those of a man fallen into lethargy,
who is being buried, and who, bound by the bonds of his own frame, hears
the deadened sound of the shovels of mould falling on his head.

The ravages to which her heart was subjected, proved still more
terrible. She felt a blow inwardly that completely undid her. Her
entire life was afflicted: all her tenderness, all her goodness, all her
devotedness had just been brutally upset and trampled under foot. She
had led a life of affection and gentleness, and in her last hours, when
about to carry to the grave a belief in the delight of a calm life, a
voice shouted to her that all was falsehood and all crime.

The veil being rent, she perceived apart from the love and friendship
which was all she had hitherto been able to see, a frightful picture of
blood and shame. She would have cursed the Almighty had she been able to
shout out a blasphemy. Providence had deceived her for over sixty years,
by treating her as a gentle, good little girl, by amusing her with
lying representations of tranquil joy. And she had remained a child,
senselessly believing in a thousand silly things, and unable to see life
as it really is, dragging along in the sanguinary filth of passions.
Providence was bad; it should have told her the truth before, or have
allowed her to continue in her innocence and blindness. Now, it only
remained for her to die, denying love, denying friendship, denying
devotedness. Nothing existed but murder and lust.

What! Camille had been killed by Therese and Laurent, and they had
conceived the crime in shame! For Ma