In the morning Pauline packed her trunk, but she could not summon up courage to tell Chanteau of her departure. In the evening, however, she was obliged to inform him of it, for Doctor Cazenove was to come the next day and take her to his relative's house. When her uncle grasped the situation he was quite overcome, and stretched out his poor, weak hands with a wild gesture as though to detain her, while in broken, stammering sentences he besought her to stay with him. She could surely never really think of such a thing, he cried; she could not possibly desert him; it would be a murder, for it would certainly kill him. Then, seeing her gently resolute and divining her reasons, he confessed his wrong-doing of the previous day in eating a partridge. He already experienced sharp burning pains in his joints. It was always the same old story. He had yielded once more in the struggle. He knew what the consequences would be if he ate, but he ate all the same, in a state of mingled pleasure and terror, quite certain that agony would ensue. Surely, however, Pauline would never desert him in the midst of one of his attacks. And indeed it happened that about six o'clock in the morning Véronique came upstairs to inform Mademoiselle that she could hear her master bellowing in his bedroom. The woman was in a very bad temper, and went growling about the house that if Mademoiselle were going she would certainly be off as well, as she had grown quite tired of looking after such an unreasonable old man. Thus Pauline was once more obliged to take up her position by her uncle's bedside; and when the Doctor arrived to take her away with him, she showed him the sick man, who triumphed, bellowing his loudest, and crying to her to leave him, if she could find it in her heart to do so. Everything had to be postponed. Every day the young girl trembled at the thought of seeing Lazare and Louise come back. Their new room, the former guest-chamber, had been specially fitted up, and had been waiting ready for them ever since their marriage. They were lingering on at Caen, however, and Lazare wrote to say that he was making notes on the financial world before returning to Bonneville and shutting himself up there to start on a great novel, in which he should reveal the truth about company promoters and speculators. At last he arrived one morning without his wife, and unconcernedly announced that he was going to settle with her in Paris. His father-in-law, he said, had prevailed upon him to accept that post in the Insurance Company, on the ground that he would thus have a good opportunity for making his notes from actual observation. Later on, he added, he might perhaps, come back and devote himself to literature.