The lugubrious train entered the drawing-room. Blaise had been laid on a stretcher provided with a mattress. Denis, as pale as linen, followed, supporting the pillow on which rested his brother's head. A little streamlet of blood coursed over the dying man's brow, his eyes were closed. And four factory hands held the shafts of the stretcher. Their heavy shoes crushed down the carpet, and fragile articles of furniture were thrust aside anyhow to open a passage for this invasion of horror and of fright. Amid his bewilderment, an idea occurred to Beauchêne, who continued to direct the operation. "No, no, don't leave him there. There is a bed in the next room. We will take him up very gently with the mattress, and lay him with it on the bed." It was Maurice's room; it was the bed in which Maurice had died, and which Constance with maternal piety had kept unchanged, consecrating the room to her son's memory. But what could she say? How could she prevent Blaise from dying there in his turn, killed by her? The abomination of it all, the vengeance of destiny which exacted this sacrilege, filled her with such a feeling of revolt that at the moment when vertigo was about to seize her and the flooring began to flee from beneath her feet, she was lashed by it and kept erect. And then she displayed extraordinary strength, will, and insolent courage. When the stricken man passed before her, her puny little frame stiffened and grew. She looked at him, and her yellow face remained motionless, save for a flutter of her eyelids and an involuntary nervous twinge on the left side of her mouth, which forced a slight grimace. But that was all, and again she became perfect both in words and gesture, doing and saying what was necessary without lavishness, but like one simply thunderstruck by the suddenness of the catastrophe. However, the orders had been carried out in the bedroom, and the bearers withdrew greatly upset. Down below, directly the accident had been discovered, old Moineaud had been told to take a cab and hasten to Dr. Boutan's to bring him back with a surgeon, if one could be found on the way. "All the same, I prefer to have him here rather than in the basement," Beauchêne repeated mechanically as he stood before the bed. "He still breathes. There! see, it is quite apparent. Who knows? Perhaps Boutan may be able to pull him through, after all."