‘The flowers,’ he said, ‘live only for a day, while the rough nettles, like me, wear out the very stones amidst which they spring.... Now it’s all over; I can kick the bucket; I am nearly distracted. My last ray of sunlight has been snuffed out. It’s all nonsense, as I said before.’ He threw himself upon one of the chairs in his turn. He did not shed a tear; he bore himself with rigid despair, like some automaton whose mechanism is broken. Mechanically he reached out his hand and took a book that lay on the little table strewn with violets. It was one of the books stored away in the loft, an odd volume of Holbach,* which he had been reading since the morning, while watching by Albine’s body. As the doctor still remained silent, buried in distressful thought, he began to turn its pages over. But a sadden idea occurred to him. * Doubtless Holbach’s now forgotten _Catechism of Nature_, into which M. Zola himself may well have peeped whilst writing this story.--ED. ‘If you will help me,’ he said to the doctor, ‘we will carry her downstairs, and bury her with all her flowers.’ Uncle Pascal shuddered. Then he explained to the old man that it was not allowed for one to keep the dead in that fashion. ‘What! it isn’t allowed!’ cried Jeanbernat. ‘Well, then, I will allow it myself! Doesn’t she belong to me? Isn’t she mine? Do you think I am going to let the priests walk off with her? Let them try, if they want to get a shot from my gun!’ He sprang to his feet and waved his book about with a terrible gesture. But the doctor caught hold of his hands and clasped them within his own, beseeching him to be calm. And for a long time he talked to him, saying all that he had upon his mind. He blamed himself, made fragmentary confessions of his fault, and vaguely hinted at those who had killed Albine. ‘Listen,’ he said in conclusion, ‘she is yours no longer; you must give her up.’ But Jeanbernat shook his head, and again waved his hand in token of refusal. However, his obstinate resolution was shaken; and at last he said: ‘Well, well, let them take her, and may she break their arms for them! I only wish that she could rise up out of the ground and kill them all with fright.... By the way. I have a little business to settle over there. I will go to-morrow.... Good-bye, then, doctor. The hole will do for me.’ And, when the doctor had left, he again sat down by the dead girl’s side, and gravely resumed the perusal of his book. XVI