“It is better to be envied than pitied,” added her brother, who was as proud as she. “Your uncle’s bank at Annecy prospered, until a confidential clerk absconded with title deeds and deposits, and Marc, unable to bear the temporary storm aroused by this flight, and stunned by the shock, committed suicide. God grant that he has been permitted to repent! Your father left directly. He understood the situation. All was paid, both capital and interest--but we had to sacrifice the greater part of our fortune. However, we were able to save Le Maupas, which belongs to the family.” “Le Maupas is to all of us the living picture of our childhood days,” said Marcel. Madame Guibert continued, “Before disposing of his fortune your father asked the consent of all of you.” “Yes, I remember. It was at the beginning of the campaign. But father’s conduct seemed to me an excess of punctiliousness. These money matters are quite strange and indifferent to me.” “Paule was consulted, too.” “There was our name,” said Paule, “and our honor.” “Your marriage portion was involved, my child.... After his brother’s tragic end,” the mother went on, “your father was so affected that he never recovered his gaiety. But his energy and capacity for work were doubled. When the epidemic broke out at Cognin he did not take sufficient care of himself. He was the last to be attacked by the disease, and at a time when he was exhausted and worn out. From the first he knew that he was lost, but he never admitted it. I understood at the last. He studied the progress of his illness himself. One day he said to me, ‘Don’t be unhappy, God will help you.’ ‘He will help us,’ I said. He made no reply. He thought of his death fearlessly. He died in our arms, conscious to the last.” “Only I was not there,” said Marcel. “There at the bedside were Étienne, just back from Tonkin, François, Paule, and Étienne’s fiancée, too, Louise Saudet.” “Where was Marguerite?” “She could not come,” answered Madame Guibert sadly, but with no bitterness in her voice. “They would not allow her. She belongs to God. We have not seen her since she entered the convent.” All three were silent, lost in memories. The thought of death was in their hearts, but all about them the world of living things vibrated in the sunshine. A leaf already shrivelled, forerunner of autumn, dropped from a branch and floated slowly down through the warm air. Paule pointed a finger at it, calling her brother’s attention. To Marcel, plunged in sorrowful reflection, it seemed a symbol. “It has lived to the summer. Others go in the springtime,” he said. He was thinking of the premature end of his sister Thérèse, and of death which had threatened him more than once. But soon he shook oil this gloomy foreboding. “Short or long,” he exclaimed, “life must be lived with full courage. That was father’s way. His memory comforts me; it doesn’t dishearten me.” “And Étienne left soon after for Tonkin again?” he continued.