Blaise was with the parents at the bedside at the moment when Maurice expired. It was then about two in the morning, and as soon as possible he telegraphed the news of the death to Chantebled. Nine o'clock was striking when Marianne, very pale, quite upset, came into the yard to call Mathieu. "Maurice is dead!... _Mon Dieu_! an only son; poor people!" They stood there thunderstruck, chilled and trembling. They had simply heard that the young man was poorly; they had not imagined him to be seriously ill. "Let me go to dress," said Mathieu; "I shall take the quarter-past ten o'clock train. I must go to kiss them." Although Marianne was expecting her eleventh child before long, she decided to accompany her husband. It would have pained her to be unable to give this proof of affection to her cousins, who, all things considered, had treated Blaise and his young wife very kindly. Moreover, she was really grieved by the terrible catastrophe. So she and her husband, after distributing the day's work among the servants, set out for Janville station, which they reached just in time to catch the quarter-past ten o'clock train. It was already rolling on again when they recognized the Lepailleurs and their son Antonin in the very compartment where they were seated. Seeing the Froments thus together in full dress, the miller imagined that they were going to a wedding, and when he learnt that they had a visit of condolence to make, he exclaimed: "Oh! so it's just the contrary. But no matter, it's an outing, a little diversion nevertheless." Since Mathieu's victory, since the whole of the estate of Chantebled had been conquered and fertilized, Lepailleur had shown some respect for his _bourgeois_ rival. Nevertheless, although he could not deny the results hitherto obtained, he did not altogether surrender, but continued sneering, as if he expected that some rending of heaven or earth would take place to prove him in the right. He would not confess that he had made a mistake; he repeated that he knew the truth, and that folks would some day see plainly enough that a peasant's calling was the very worst calling there could be, since the dirty land had gone bankrupt and would yield nothing more. Besides, he held his revenge--that enclosure which he left barren, uncultivated, by way of protest against the adjoining estate which it intersected. The thought of this made him ironical. "Well," he resumed in his ridiculously vain, scoffing way, "we are going to Paris too. Yes, we are going to install this young gentleman there." He pointed as he spoke to his son Antonin, now a tall, carroty fellow of eighteen, with an elongated head. A few light-colored bristles were already sprouting on his chin and cheeks, and he wore town attire, with a silk hat and gloves, and a bright blue necktie. After astonishing Janville by his success at school, he had displayed so much repugnance to manual work that his father had decided to make "a Parisian" of him.