'Yes,' said Gaume; 'she dreams of mapping out her life for herself. There _are_ girls like that.' Mazelle remained perplexed, for he feared that the judge was again poking fun at him. The idea that he had made a fortune in ten years, that he had since been leading the delightful life of sloth of which he had dreamt already in his youth, and that his felicity might now come to an end, that he might, perhaps, be compelled to work again if work should become the general rule, filled him with ceaseless, intolerable anguish, which was like a first punishment for his sins. 'But the Rentes, Monsieur le Président, what would become of them, in your opinion, if all those Anarchists should succeed in turning the world topsy-turvy? As you may remember, that Monsieur Luc, who is behaving so badly, used to make fun of us, saying that the Rentes would be suppressed. In that case they may as well cut our throats.' 'Sleep in peace, I tell you,' Gaume repeated with quiet irony, 'the new social fabric will feed you if you won't work.' Then the Mazelles went off to church, where they now burnt tapers to the Virgin in the hope of inducing her to cure Madame Mazelle; for Doctor Novarre had one day been brute enough to tell the old lady that she was not ill at all. Not ill, indeed! when she had been nursing her illness so lovingly for so many years--that illness which was her very life--to such a point had she made it her occupation, her joy, her _raison d'être_! If the doctor forsook her it must be that he deemed her incurable; at which thought, full of terror, she had addressed herself to religion, in which she now found great relief.