At the same time a kind of reaction seemed to increase her affection for her own son, and she worshipped him now almost more than she had done when she had held him in her arms as an infant and had possessed his undivided love. From morning till night she followed him with her anxious eyes; and when they were alone together she would throw her arms around him and kiss him, and beg him not to distress himself. She swore to him that everything should be put right, that she would strangle those who opposed her rather than have him unhappy. After a fortnight of this continual struggling, her face had become as pale as wax, though she grew no thinner. The swelling in her feet had twice appeared again, and had then subsided. One morning she rang for Véronique, to whom she showed her legs, which had swollen to the thighs during the night. 'Just look at the state I'm in! Isn't it provoking? I wanted to go out so much to-day, and now I shall be obliged to stay in bed! Don't say anything about it for fear of alarming Lazare.' She did not seem to be at all alarmed herself. She merely remarked that she felt a little tired, and the members of the family simply supposed that she was suffering from a slight attack of lumbago. As Lazare had gone off on one of his rambles along the shore, and Pauline refrained from entering her aunt's room, knowing that her presence there would be unwelcome, the sick woman occupied herself by dinning furious charges against her niece into the servant's ears. She seemed to have lost all control of herself. The immobility to which she was condemned and the palpitations of the heart which stifled her at the slightest movement goaded her into ever-increasing exasperation. 'What's she doing downstairs? Up to some fresh wickedness, I'm sure! She'll never think of bringing me even a glass of water, you'll see!' 'But, Madame,' urged Véronique, 'it is you who drive her from you.' 'Ah! you don't know her! There never was such a hypocrite as she is. Before other people she pretends to be kind and generous, but there's nothing she wouldn't do or say when your back's turned. Yes, my good girl, you were the only one who saw things clearly on the day I first brought her here. If she had never come, we shouldn't now be in the state we are. She will prove the ruin of us all. Your master has suffered all the agonies of the damned since she has been in this house, and she has worried and distressed me till she has quite undermined my health; while as for my son, she made him lose his head entirely.' 'Oh, Madame! how can you say that when she is so kind and good to you all?'