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By Root 1286 0

rooftops like a sleepwalker in the grip of an idea he could not shake. He was therefore surprised and irritated one evening to find Angèle sick in her bed. His home life, as regular as clockwork, had gone awry, and this exasperated him as if fate had deliberately played him a dirty trick. Poor Angèle complained mildly; she had caught a chill. When the doctor arrived, he seemed quite worried. On the landing he told the husband that his wife had pneumonia and he could not answer for her life. From that moment on the clerk nursed the patient without a trace of anger. He stopped going to the office, remained at her side, and stared at her with an inscrutable expression as she slept, flushed with fever and short of breath. Mme Sidonie, despite her crushing workload, found time every evening to stop in and prepare a tisane,9 which she claimed would cure anything. To all her other professions she added that of a born nurse, pleased to be in close proximity to suffering, medications, and the kinds of anguished conversations that take place around the beds of the dying. She seemed taken, moreover, by a tender friendship for Angèle. She truly loved women and lavished them with a thousand kindnesses, no doubt for the pleasure they gave men. She treated them with the same delicate attention that merchants reserve for the most precious items on their shelves, called them “my darling, my beauty,” cooed over them and swooned before them like a lover before his mistress. Although Angèle was not the sort from whom she hoped to gain anything, she flattered her as she did the others, obedient to a general rule of conduct. When the young woman took to her bed, Mme Sidonie’s effusions turned maudlin, and she filled the silent bedroom with signs of her devotion. Her brother watched her move about the room with her lips pressed together as though devastated by unspoken grief.

The illness worsened. One evening the doctor let it be known that the patient would not last the night. Mme Sidonie had come early, looking preoccupied, and stared at Aristide and Angèle with watery eyes illuminated by brief flashes of fire. After the doctor left, she turned down the lamp, and deep silence ensued. Death slowly made its way into the hot, humid room, which the dying woman’s irregular breathing filled with a syncopated ticking like that of a clock about to run down. Mme Sidonie had given up on her potions, allowing the disease to do its work. She sat down in front of the fireplace next to her brother, who poked feverishly at the fire while casting involuntary glances at the bed. Then, as if overwhelmed by the heavy atmosphere and the distressing spectacle, he withdrew into the adjacent room. Little Clotilde, who had been left there, was sitting on a rug and playing very quietly with her doll. Saccard’s daughter smiled at him, but just then Mme Sidonie slipped into the room behind him and drew him off to a corner, where she spoke to him in a low voice. The door remained open, and a faint rattle could be heard in Angèle’s throat.

“Your poor wife,” the businesswoman sobbed. “I think the end is near. You heard the doctor?”

Saccard made no reply other than to bow his head in a mournful manner.

“She was a good woman,” his sister continued, speaking as though Angèle were already dead. “You can find women who are wealthier and more familiar with the ways of the world, but you’ll never find a heart like hers.”

Then she stopped and, wiping her eyes, seemed to be casting about for a way to change the subject. “Do you have something to say to me?” Saccard asked bluntly.

“Yes, I’ve been looking after your interests in regard to the matter we were discussing, and I think I’ve found . . . But at a time like this . . . My heart is breaking, you know.”

She wiped her eyes once more. Saccard, maintaining his composure, let her run through her act without saying a word. Finally she made up her mind to come right out with it: “There’s a young woman whose family would like to find her a husband immediately. The dear child finds herself in trouble. There’s an aunt who would