No one, save a little substitute, a fair and rosy young man full of zeal, troubled about them. And he searched their pockets to see if he could find any papers, visiting-cards, or letters, which would enable him to ticket each of them with a name and address. Meanwhile, a gaping crowd had gathered about him; for, although there was no house within a league around, a number of idlers had arrived, no one could say whence--some thirty men, women, and children, who simply stood in the way without lending any assistance. And the black dust, the veil of smoke and vapour that had enveloped everything, having dispersed, the radiant April morning burst triumphant upon the scene of massacre, bathing the dead and dying, the ripped-up La Lison, and the pile of wreckage, in gentle, gay streams of bright sun; while the gang of workmen engaged in clearing the line reminded one of ants repairing the damage done to their hill by the feet of a thoughtless passer-by. Jacques continued unconscious, and Séverine, stopping a doctor as he came along, besought his assistance. The latter examined the young man without discovering any visible wound, but fearing internal lesions on account of the thin streaks of blood that appeared between his lips, he declined to express a formal opinion, but advised that Jacques should be removed as speedily, and with as little jolting as possible, and put to bed. Jacques, at the touch of hands passing over him, had again opened his eyes with a suppressed ejaculation of pain. This time he recognised Séverine, and stammered in a wandering manner: "Take me away--take me away!" Flore bent forward, and Jacques moving his head recognised her also. His eyes at once took the terrified expression of a child, and he turned back towards Séverine, shrinking from the other with a look of hatred and horror. "Take me away, immediately, immediately!" said he. Then Séverine, troubling no more about Flore than if she had not been present, inquired in a most affectionate tone: "Will you let me take you to La Croix-de-Maufras? It is just opposite; and if you consent we shall be at home there." And still agitated, with his eyes fixed on the other, he acquiesced. "Anywhere you please, immediately," said he. Flore, who remained motionless, turned pale as death at his look of terrified execration. And so, in this carnage of innocent people, she had not succeeded in killing them, neither the one nor the other: the woman had come out of it without a scratch; and now he would perhaps escape. She had only succeeded in throwing them together all alone in this solitary house. She saw them comfortable there, the sweetheart recovered, convalescent; the girl full of attention, recompensed for her vigils by continual caresses, both prolonging the honeymoon of the catastrophe in absolute liberty and far from the world. She turned icy cold, and cast her eyes on the dead she had slaughtered to no purpose.