She sank back into the chair exhausted, shaking at another sound of the horn. It came from Misard, who, standing at the door of his box, this time signalled a train on its way to Havre. In spite of her obstinate determination to withhold the legacy, she had a secret and increasing fear of him, the same kind of fear as that of a giant, for the insect he feels devouring him. The train signalled, the slow train which had left Paris at 12.45, was coming along in the distance with a dull rumble. It could be heard issuing from the tunnel and puffing louder in the open country. Then it passed amidst the thunder of its wheels, and its mass of carriages, with the invincible might of a hurricane. Jacques, with his eyes raised towards the window, had watched the small squares of glass file past. Wishing to turn aside the gloomy ideas of Aunt Phasie, he resumed in a joking vein: "Godmother, you complain that you never see a soul in this hole; but there are people for you!" Failing, at first, to catch his meaning, she looked astounded, and inquired: "Where are there any people?" Then, understanding, she added: "Ah! yes, those folk who go by. What good are they? One does not know them, one cannot chat with them." He continued in a merry tone: "But me, you know me well enough; you often see me pass." "You, that's true. I know you, and I know the time of your train," she answered. "Only, you fly, fly along! Yesterday you did so with your hand. I can't even answer. No, no, that's no way of seeing people." Nevertheless, this idea of the multitude the up and down trains carried along daily before her, amidst the deep silence of her solitude, made her pensive, and she turned her eyes to the line where night was drawing in. When in good health, and she went and came, planting herself before the gate, her flag in her hand, she never thought of such things. But since she had been remaining for days on this chair, with naught to think of but her underhand struggle with this man, confused reveries, barely formulated, had set her head topsy-turvy. It seemed to her so strange that she should be living here, lost in the depths of this desert, without a soul in whom she could confide, when so many men and women filed past in the tempestuous blast of the trains, shaking the house, tearing along full steam, day and night continually. Certainly all the inhabitants of the earth went by there, not only Frenchmen, foreigners also; persons come from the most distant lands, as no one could now remain at home, and as all people, according to what had been written, would soon be but one. This was progress: brothers all, rolling along together, yonder towards a land of plenty.