Your Papa was never a one to talk much, and he didn’t care to be spoken to first. All the same in those days he was a little more talkative than he has been of late.… But there now! What’s past is past, and it’s better not to stir it up again. There’s One above who’s a better judge of these things than we are.”

“Do you really think that He concerns Himself about such things, dear Fine?”

“Why, if He doesn’t, who should then?”

Gontran puts his lips on Séraphine’s red, roughened hand. “You really ought to go to bed now. I promise to wake you as soon as it is light, and then I’ll take my turn to rest. Please!”

As soon as Séraphine has left him, Gontran falls upon his knees at the foot of the bed; he buries his head in the sheets, but he cannot succeed in weeping. No emotion stirs his heart; his eyes remain despairingly dry. Then he gets up and looks at the impassive face on the bed. At this solemn moment, he would like to have some rare, sublime experience—hear a message from the world beyond—send his thought flying into ethereal regions, inaccessible to mortal senses. But no! his thought remains obstinately grovelling on the earth; he looks at the dead man’s bloodless hands and wonders for how much longer the nails will go on growing. The sight of the unclasped hands grates on him. He would like to join them, to make them hold the crucifix. What a good idea! He thinks of Séraphine’s astonishment when she sees the dead hands folded together; the thought of Séraphine’s astonishment amuses him; and then he despises himself for being amused. Nevertheless he stoops over the bed. He seizes the arm which is farthest from him. The arm is stiff and will not bend. Gontran tries to force it, but the whole body moves with it. He seizes the other arm, which seems a little less rigid. Gontran almost succeeds in putting the hand in the proper place. He takes the crucifix and tries to slip it between the fingers and the thumb, but the contact of the cold flesh turns him sick. He thinks he is going to faint. He has a mind to call Séraphine back. He gives up everything—the crucifix, which drops aslant on the tumbled sheet, and the lifeless arm, which falls back again into its first position; then, through the depths of the funereal silence, he suddenly hears a rough and brutal “God damn!” which fills him with terror, as if someone else … He turns round—but no! he is alone. It was from his own lips, from his own heart, that that resounding curse broke forth—his, who until to-day has never uttered an oath! Then he sits down and plunges again into his reading.

V : Vincent Meets Passavant at Lady Griffith’s

C’était une âme et un corps où n’entrait jamais l’aiguillon.

SAINTE-BEUVE.

Lilian half sat up and put the tips of her fingers on Robert’s chestnut hair. “Take care, my dear. You are hardly thirty yet and you’re beginning to get thin on the top. Baldness wouldn’t be at all becoming to you. You take life too seriously.”

Robert raised his face and looked at her, smiling. “Not when I am with you, I assure you.”

“Did you tell Molinier to come?”

“Yes, as you asked me to.”

“And … you lent him money?”

“Five thousand francs, as I told you … and he’ll lose it, like the rest.”

“Why should he lose it?”

“He’s bound to. I saw him the first evening.