A drizzling rain was falling, and midnight had just struck as Malivoire's old coach brought Pauline back to Bonneville on the evening of the wedding. Wearing a blue silk gown, and ill protected by a little shawl, she was pale and shivering though her hands were hot. In the kitchen she found Véronique sitting up for her and dozing beside the table. The tall flame of the candle made the girl's eyes blink, full as they still were of the darkness of the journey, during which they had remained wide open all the way from Arromanches. She could only drag a few incoherent words from the drowsy servant: the master had been very foolish, but he was asleep now, and nobody had called. Then Pauline took a candle and went upstairs, chilled by the emptiness of the house, heart-sick amidst all the gloom and silence which seemed to weigh upon her shoulders. When she reached the second floor she wished to take immediate refuge in her own room, but an irresistible impulse, at which she felt surprised, led her to open Lazare's door. She raised her candle to enable her to see, as though she fancied the room was full of smoke. Nothing was changed. Every piece of furniture was in its accustomed place, but she felt conscious of calamity, annihilation; it was a vague terror, as though she were in some chamber of death. She slowly walked up to the table and looked at the inkstand, the pen, and an unfinished page of manuscript still lying there. Then she went away. All was over, and the door closed on the echoing emptiness of the room. When she reached her own chamber, the same vague sensation of strangeness that she had felt in Lazare's again affected her. Could this indeed be her room, with its wall-paper of blue roses and its little muslin-curtained iron bed? Was it really here that she had lived so many years? Still keeping her candle in her hand, she, who was usually so courageous, made a minute inspection of the apartment, pushed the curtains aside, looked under the bed and behind the furniture. She felt overcome by a strange kind of stupor, which kept her standing in front of the different things. She could not have believed that such keen anguish could ever have possessed her beneath that ceiling, whose every stain was familiar to her; and she now began to regret that she had not stayed at Caen. For she felt frightened in that old house, which was so empty and yet so full of memories of the past, and so cold, too, and so dark that stormy night. The thought of going to bed was intolerable to her. She sat down without even taking off her hat, and for several minutes remained motionless, her eyes fixed upon the candle-flame, which dazzled them. Suddenly, however, she started up in astonishment. What was she doing there, with her head throbbing wildly, with a violence that quite prevented her from thinking? It was one o'clock. She ought to be in bed. And she began to undress with slow, feverish hands.