He had found a cloth, which he dipped in the pan of water and pressed against the dying animal's mouth. It seemed to relieve him; and his nose, which was excoriated through fever, became a little cooler. Half an hour passed, during which Lazare constantly dipped the cloth in the water, while his eyes filled with tears at the painful sight before him, and his heart ached with all the bitterness of grief. Wild hopes came to him at times, as they do to the watchers at a bedside; perhaps, he thought, he might recall ebbing life by that simple application of cold water. 'Ah! what is the matter? What do you want to do?' he cried suddenly. 'You want to get on your feet, eh?' Matthew, shaken by a fit of shivering, made desperate efforts to raise himself. He stiffened his limbs, while his neck was distended by his hiccoughs. But the end was close at hand, and he fell across his master's knees, with eyes still straining from beneath their heavy lids to catch sight of him. Quite overcome by that glance, so full of intelligence, Lazare held Matthew there on his knees, while the animal's big body, heavy like that of a man, was racked by a human-like death-agony in his sorrowing embrace. It lasted for some minutes, and then Lazare saw real tears--heavy tears--roll down from the dog's mournful eyes, while his tongue showed forth from his convulsed mouth, as though for a last caress. 'Oh! my poor old dog!' cried Lazare, bursting into sobs. Matthew was dead. A little bloody foam frothed round his jaws. As Lazare laid him down on the floor he looked as though he were asleep. Then once more the young man felt that all was over. His dog was dead now, and this filled him with unreasonable grief and seemed to cast a gloom over his whole life. That death awoke in him the memory of other deaths, and he had not felt more heart-broken even when walking through the yard behind his mother's coffin. Some last portion of her seemed to be torn away from him; she had gone from him now entirely. The recollection of his months of secret anguish, of his nights disturbed by nightmare visions, of his walks to the little graveyard, and of all his terror at the thought of annihilation, surged up in his mind. However, he heard a sound, and when he turned he saw Minouche quietly making her toilet on the straw. But the door creaked, and Pauline then entered the coach-house, impelled thither by an impulse similar to that of her cousin. When he saw her his tears fell faster, and he who had carefully concealed all his grief at his mother's death, as though it had been some shameful folly, now cried: 'Oh, God! God! She loved him so dearly! You remember, don't you? She first had him when he was quite a tiny little thing, and it was she who always fed him, and he used to follow her all over the house!' Then he added; 'There is no one left now, and we are utterly alone!'