dame Raquin, there was such a
fathomless depth in this thought, that she could neither reason it
out, nor grasp it clearly. She experienced but one sensation, that of
a horrible disaster; it seemed to her that she was falling into a dark,
cold hole. And she said to herself:

"I shall be smashed to pieces at the bottom."

After the first shock, the crime appeared to her so monstrous that it
seemed impossible. Then, when convinced of the misbehaviour and murder,
by recalling certain little incidents which she had formerly failed to
understand, she was afraid of going out of her mind. Therese and Laurent
were really the murderers of Camille: Therese whom she had reared,
Laurent whom she had loved with the devoted and tender affection of
a mother. These thoughts revolved in her head like an immense wheel,
accompanied by a deafening noise.

She conjectured such vile details, fathomed such immense hypocrisy,
assisting in thought at a double vision so atrocious in irony, that she
would have liked to die, mechanical and implacable, pounded her brain
with the weight and ceaseless action of a millstone. She repeated to
herself:

"It is my children who have killed my child."

And she could think of nothing else to express her despair.

In the sudden change that had come over her heart, she no longer
recognised herself. She remained weighed down by the brutal invasion of
ideas of vengeance that drove away all the goodness of her life. When
she had been thus transformed, all was dark inwardly; she felt the birth
of a new being within her frame, a being pitiless and cruel, who would
have liked to bite the murderers of her son.

When she had succumbed to the overwhelming stroke of paralysis, when she
understood that she could not fly at the throats of Therese and Laurent,
whom she longed to strangle, she resigned herself to silence and
immobility, and great tears fell slowly from her eyes. Nothing could
be more heartrending than this mute and motionless despair. Those tears
coursing, one by one, down this lifeless countenance, not a wrinkle
of which moved, that inert, wan face which could not weep with its
features, and whose eyes alone sobbed, presented a poignant spectacle.

Therese was seized with horrified pity.

"We must put her to bed," said she to Laurent, pointing to her aunt.

Laurent hastened to roll the paralysed woman into her bedroom. Then, as
he stooped down to take her in his arms, Madame Raquin hoped that so