Was it really true, O God, that she was doomed to die, and he to see it? Was he to lose the future he had dreamed of, a future of unruffled happiness, of love and peace, as her husband; the joy he had known for such a brief space, of having a woman, sweet and dear and helpless as a child, to cherish and protect?--Was he condemned never to know the pleasure of having a family--a pleasure that had been denied to him, an orphan, and of which he had often dreamed as of one of the joys of Paradise--was he condemned never to know it, because he had forgotten his longing for a single day? The picture, dear to country-folk, of the chimney with the smoke curling upward, that seems to say to them, as far as it can be seen: "The soup is hot, the wife is waiting, the children are calling," recurred sometimes to his mind, and he sighed profoundly. The punishment that he saw coming upon him did not seem to him proportionate to the offence. There was no justice in it! What is the meaning of that most terrible of all mysteries: that the love of the senses is more powerful than the love of the heart when separated from its object, even though the last be recognized as the more certain and the sweeter? Between the lofty chapel and the subterranean crypt of the church of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, on the level of human life, does the miracle come always from below? And if it be so, is it any less a miracle? Which of you has fathomed the meaning of life? Who can say: "It is unjust," or: "It is useless," or: "What I do not see does not exist"? Who can say if Livette's sufferings and Renaud's, their troubles and their heart-burnings, all the invisible and inexplicable movements within themselves,--of which they knew nothing,--were not preparing the way for realities inconceivable to our minds? The _ideal_, the dream of what is best, is the essential condition of the _material_ development of mankind. No force is wasted; everything is transformed. "Everything is of some use," said the old shepherd Sigaud. "It takes all kinds to make a world." Livette had forgiven Renaud, Renaud had not forgiven himself. Sometimes he gazed at her, deeply moved, and he suffered with her for hours at a time. Sometimes he had sudden fits of rage against her--paroxysms of wickedness, as it were. Was she not an obstacle in his path? At such times, he believed that he was possessed by a devil, and he would kneel by Livette's bed and pray to the saints, the women of compassion. Ah! how thin she was! Her eyes seemed to have grown larger, and to have changed from blue to black, because the pupils were still dilated. Her long, fair hair no longer shone. It seemed as if the muddy water of the swamp had taken away its gloss forever. She often started at noises that she imagined she heard. She, who in the old days used to talk but little, was constantly telling of the things she had dreamed, and she would be vexed if they were not remembered.