Pascal had recovered from his first shock, and he was almost smiling. “Why horrible? He was eighty-four years old; he did not suffer. As for me, I think it a superb death for that old rascal of an uncle, who, it may be now said, did not lead a very exemplary life. You remember his envelope; he had some very terrible and vile things upon his conscience, which did not prevent him, however, from settling down later and growing old, surrounded by every comfort, like an old humbug, receiving the recompense of virtues which he did not possess. And here he lies like the prince of drunkards, burning up of himself, consumed on the burning funeral pile of his own body!” And the doctor waved his hand in admiration. “Just think of it. To be drunk to the point of not feeling that one is on fire; to set one’s self aflame, like a bonfire on St. John’s day; to disappear in smoke to the last bone. Think of Uncle Macquart starting on his journey through space; first diffused through the four corners of the room, dissolved in air and floating about, bathing all that belonged to him; then escaping in a cloud of dust through the window, when I opened it for him, soaring up into the sky, filling the horizon. Why, that is an admirable death! To disappear, to leave nothing of himself behind but a little heap of ashes and a pipe beside it!” And he picked up the pipe to keep it, as he said, as a relic of Uncle Macquart; while Clotilde, who thought she perceived a touch of bitter mockery in his eulogistic rhapsody, shuddered anew with horror and disgust. But suddenly she perceived something under the table—part of the remains, perhaps. “Look at that fragment there.” He stooped down and picked up with surprise a woman’s glove, a yellow glove. “Why!” she cried, “it is grandmother’s glove; the glove that was missing last evening.” They looked at each other; by a common impulse the same explanation rose to their lips, Félicité was certainly there yesterday; and a sudden conviction forced itself on the doctor’s mind—the conviction that his mother had seen Uncle Macquart burning and that she had not quenched him. Various indications pointed to this—the state of complete coolness in which he found the room, the number of hours which he calculated to have been necessary for the combustion of the body. He saw clearly the same thought dawning in the terrified eyes of his companion. But as it seemed impossible that they should ever know the truth, he fabricated aloud the simplest explanation: “No doubt your grandmother came in yesterday on her way back from the asylum, to say good day to Uncle Macquart, before he had begun drinking.” “Let us go away! let us go away!” cried Clotilde. “I am stifling here; I cannot remain here!”