“Yes, go upstairs quick, my girl. She's waiting for you. She's been asking for you all night. She has something to tell you.” But just at that moment Baudu came down. The rising bile gave his yellow face a greenish tinge, and his eyes were bloodshot. He was still walking with the muffled step with which he had quitted the Sick room, and murmur-ed, as if he might be heard upstairs, “She's asleep.” And, thoroughly worn out, he sat down on a chair, wiping his forehead with a mechanical gesture, puffing like a man who has just finished some hard work. A silence ensued, but at last he said to Denise: “You'll see her presently. When she is sleeping, she seems to me to be all right again.” There was again a silence. Face to face, the father and mother stood looking at each other. Then, in a half whisper, he went over his grief again, naming no one, addressing no one directly: “My head on the block, I wouldn't have believed it! He was the last one. I had brought him up as a son. If any one had come and said to me, 'They'll take him away from you as well; he'll fall as well,' I would have replied 'Impossible, it could not be.' And he has fallen all the same! Ah! the scoundrel, he who was so well up in real business, who had all my ideas! And all for a young monkey, one of those dummies that parade at the windows of bad houses! No! really, it's enough to drive one mad!” He shook his head, his eyes fell on the damp floor worn away by generations of customers. Then he continued in a lower voice, “There are moments when I feel myself the most culpable of all in our misfortune. Yes, it's my fault if our poor girl is upstairs devoured by fever. Ought not I to have married them at once, without yielding to my stupid pride, my obstinacy in refusing to leave them the house less prosperous than before? Had I done that she would now have the man she loved, and perhaps their united youthful strength would have accomplished the miracle that I have failed to work. But I am an old fool, and saw through nothing; I didn't know that people fell ill over such things. Really he was an extraordinary fellow: with such a gift for business, and such probity, such simplicity of conduct, so orderly in every way--in short, my pupil.” He raised his head, still defending his ideas, in the person of the shopman who had betrayed him. Denise could not bear to hear him accuse himself, and she told him so, carried away by her emotion, on seeing him so humble, with his eyes full of tears, he who used formerly to reign as absolute master. “Uncle, pray don't apologise for him. He never loved Geneviève, he would have run away sooner if you had tried to hasten the marriage. I have spoken to him myself about it; he was perfectly well aware that my cousin was suffering on his account, and you see that did not prevent him leaving. Ask aunt.”