Raymonde, who had been brought into the chateau on a stretcher, would not leave it alive. Reflected in my frightened love, which was no longer deluded, and which nothing could again alter, she watched herself die and pass away as in a mirror. * * * During the pleasant hours of the day, her chair was placed near an open window. I never left her. I attached myself to each moment as if to prevent its flight. The birds were singing, the leaves beginning to come out. One seemed to hear the germination in the earth like a low hum in the clear air. I was tortured by the sight of this silently renewing life while the work of death was going on before me. Nothing of what passed within my heart escaped my wife. “You are mistaken, dear,” she said. “This is not the end.” She was thinking: “This is the beginning. It is not the earth that is calling me.” At that moment, a bell began to toll the Angelus. Other churches took up the burden from a distance. “Listen,” she murmured, inspired by those churchly voices, as she had been in the garden of the Pincio,--“listen--” I wanted to close the window, on account of the evening air. She allowed me to do so, but she was thinking “Of what avail?” Or perhaps she was repeating to herself: “It is so simple.” * * * One morning I found M. Mairieux at the door, having come over for news of the patient. “Won’t you come in?” I asked. He looked at me with his sad eyes, so charged with fatherly affection. He did not know, then, that I was no longer the same man. I led him to his daughter, but he scarcely dared to follow me, remembering my former jealousy. “Father,” Raymonde said to him, “I want you to come and see how happy we are.” His too long restraint before me broke down, and I saw him sobbing. I believe that at that moment he forgave me the wrong which I had done his daughter. * * * On the first of May, in accordance with their charming custom, the children of the neighbouring villages came to sing and dance in the court. They had scarcely begun when I wanted to send them away. In the city one has straw thrown on the street in front of houses where sick people are, to deaden the noise, and I feared their noise here. Raymonde stopped me: “Let them stay, please.” “They will tire you,” I remonstrated. “No, no. Do you remember--?” As she was speaking, I recalled that other first of May, ours, when she had run away from me in the forest. The refrain of the old song had not changed. It was still: Awaken, sleeping beauty, Awaken, if you sleep! For the first time I saw my wife’s calmness--that surprising calm to which I was only now growing accustomed--shattered, as if it were a crystal that had been too roughly handled. “Soon,” she whispered.