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By Root 1244 0

it went out for good. The dying woman could not move. She collapsed, still staring at her husband with wide-open eyes, as if to follow his movements. Saccard, who for a moment thought that fate had contrived some diabolical resurrection in order to keep him mired in misery, felt reassured on seeing that the wretched woman would be dead within the hour. Now all he felt was an intolerable malaise. Angèle’s eyes told him that she had overheard his conversation with Mme Sidonie and was afraid he would strangle her if she did not die quickly enough. Her eyes also expressed the horrified amazement of a sweet and inoffensive nature in its final hour recognizing the world’s infamy and shuddering at the thought of having spent long years at the side of a bandit. Little by little her eyes softened. She was no longer afraid, and she must have taken her wretched husband’s long and unremitting struggle against fate as the basis of an excuse. Saccard, pursued by the dying woman’s stare, which he read as a reproach, leaned against the furniture and groped for the shadows. Then, feeling faint, he sought to banish the nightmare that was driving him mad and advanced into the light. But Angèle motioned to him not to speak. She continued to stare at him with a look of terrified anguish, now mixed with a promise of forgiveness. At that point he bent down to take Clotilde in his arms and carry her into the other room. With a movement of her lips Angèle stopped him from doing this as well. She insisted that he remain with her. She went gently, without taking her eyes off him, and the paler he grew, the gentler her gaze became. Forgiveness came with her final sigh. She died as she had lived, softly, diffident in death as she had been in life. Saccard stood trembling before those lifeless eyes, which remained open and, inert though they now were, continued to pursue him. Little Clotilde rocked her doll gently on the edge of the sheet so as not to wake her mother.

By the time Mme Sidonie returned, it was all over. With the deft touch of a woman accustomed to performing this final act, she closed Angèle’s eyes, much to Saccard’s relief. Then, after putting the child to bed, she rapidly tidied up the death chamber. After lighting two candles on the dresser and carefully drawing the coverlet up to the dead woman’s chin, she looked around with a satisfied glance and stretched out in an armchair, where she slept until daybreak. Saccard spent the night in the next room writing letters announcing his wife’s death. From time to time he stopped what he was doing, mused about something else, and jotted down columns of figures on scraps of paper.

On the night of the burial, Mme Sidonie brought Saccard to her apartment, where important decisions were taken. The clerk made up his mind to send little Clotilde to live with one of his brothers, Pascal Rougon, an unmarried doctor in love with science who made his home in Plassans and who had several times offered to take in his niece in the hope of bringing a little joy to the silence of his scholarly abode. Mme Sidonie impressed on him that he could no longer go on living on the rue Saint-Jacques. She would rent an elegantly furnished apartment for him somewhere near the Hôtel de Ville for a period of one month. She would try to find an apartment in a decent building, so that the furniture would appear to be his. Meanwhile, the furniture from the rue Saint-Jacques apartment would be sold, so as to eliminate the last vestiges of the past. He would use the money to buy a suitable trousseau and clothing. Three days later, Clotilde was entrusted to an elderly lady who happened to be traveling south. And a triumphant Aristide Saccard—with his cheeks now a healthy crimson color and, though fortune had been smiling on him for just three days, with more flesh already on his bones—moved into a charming five-room apartment in an austere and respectable house on rue Payenne in the Marais,10 where he padded about in embroidered slippers. The apartment belonged to a young abbé, who had departed suddenly for Italy with orders