Martine, fortunately, in the profound silence of the empty house, heard the knock. She dressed herself, wrapped a shawl about her, and went upstairs, carrying her candle. The darkness was still profound; dawn was about to break. And when she perceived her master, whose eyes alone seemed living, looking at her with locked jaws, speechless, his face distorted by pain, she was awed and terrified, and she could only rush toward the bed crying:
"My God! My God! what is the matter, monsieur? Answer me, monsieur, you frighten me!"
For a full minute Pascal struggled in vain to recover his breath. Then, the viselike pressure on his chest relaxing slowly, he murmured in a faint voice:
"The five thousand francs in the desk are Clotilde's. Tell her that the affair of the notary is settled, that she will recover from it enough to live upon."
Then Martine, who had listened to him in open-mouthed wonder, confessed the falsehood she had told him, ignorant of the good news that had been brought by Ramond.
"Monsieur, you must forgive me; I told you an untruth. But it would be wrong to deceive you longer. When I saw you alone and so unhappy, I took some of my own money."
"My poor girl, you did that!"
"Oh, I had some hope that monsieur would return it to me one day."
By this time the attack had passed off, and he was able to turn his head and look at her. He was amazed and moved. What was passing in the heart of this avaricious old maid, who for thirty years had been saving up her treasure painfully, who had never taken a sou from it, either for herself or for any one else? He did not yet comprehend, but he wished to show himself kind and grateful.
"You are a good woman, Martine. All that will be returned to you. I truly think I am going to die-"
She did not allow him to finish, her whole being rose up in rebellious protest.
"Die; you, monsieur! Die before me! I do not wish it. I will not let you die!"
She threw herself on her knees beside the bed; she caught him wildly in her arms, feeling him, to see if he suffered, holding him as if she thought that death would not dare to take him from her.
"You must tell me what is the matter with you. I will take care of you. I will save you. If it were necessary to give my life for you, I would give it, monsieur. I will sit up day and night with you. I am strong still; I will be stronger than the disease, you shall see. To die! to die! oh, no, it cannot be! The good God cannot wish so great an injustice. I have prayed so much in my life that he ought to listen to me a little now, and he will grant my prayer, monsieur; he will save you."
Pascal looked at her, listened to her, and a sudden light broke in upon his mind. She loved him, this miserable woman; she had always loved him. He thought of her thirty years of blind devotion, her mute adoration, when she had waited upon him, on her knees, as it were, when she was young; her secret jealousy of Clotilde later; what she must have secretly suffered all that time! And she was here on her knees now again, beside his deathbed; her hair gray; her eyes the color of ashes in her pale nun-like face, dulled by her solitary life. And he felt that she was unconscious of it all; that she did not even know with what sort of love she loved him, loving him only for the happiness of loving him: of being with him, and of waiting on him.
Tears rose to Pascal's eyes; a dolorous pity and an infinite human tenderness flowed from his poor, half-broken heart.
"My poor girl," he said, "you are the best of girls. Come, embrace me, as you love me, with all your strength."
She, too, sobbed. She let her gray head, her face worn by her long servitude, fall on her master's breast. Wildly she kissed him, putting all her life into the kiss.
"There, let us not give way to emotion, for you see we can do nothing; this will be the end, just the same. If you wish me to love you, obey me. Now that I am better, that I can breathe easier, do me the favor to run to Dr. Ramond's. Waken him and bring him back with you."
She was leaving the room when he called to her, seized by a sudden fear.
"And remember, I forbid you to go to inform my mother."
She turned back, embarrassed, and in a voice of entreaty, said:
"Oh, monsieur, Mme. Felicite has made me promise so often-"
But he was inflexible. All his life he had treated his mother with deference, and he thought he had acquired the right to defend himself against her in the hour of his death. He would not let the servant go until she had promised him that she would be silent. Then he smiled once more.
"Go quickly. Oh, you will see me again; it will not be yet."
Day broke at last, the melancholy dawn of the pale November day. Pascal had had the shutters opened, and when he was left alone he watched the brightening dawn, doubtless that of his last day of life. It had rained the night before, and the mild sun was still veiled by clouds. From the plane trees came the morning carols of the birds, while far away in the sleeping country a locomotive whistled with a prolonged moan. And he was alone; alone in the great melancholy house, whose emptiness he felt around him, whose silence he heard. The light slowly increased, and he watched the patches it made on the window-panes broadening and brightening. Then the candle paled in the growing light, and the whole room became visible. And with the dawn, as he had anticipated, came relief. The sight of the familiar objects around him brought him consolation.
But Pascal, although the attack had passed away, still suffered horribly. A sharp pain remained in the hollow of his chest, and his left arm, benumbed, hung from his shoulder like lead. In his long waiting for the help that Martine had gone to bring, he had reflected on the suffering which made the flesh cry out. And he found that he was resigned; he no longer felt the rebelliousness which the mere sight of physical pain had formerly awakened in him. It had exasperated him, as if it had been a monstrous and useless cruelty of nature. In his doubts as a physician, he had attended his patients only to combat it, and to relieve it. If he ended by accepting it, now that he himself suffered its horrible torture, was it that he had risen one degree higher in his faith of life, to that serene height whence life appeared altogether good, even with the fatal condition of suffering attached to it; suffering which is perhaps its spring? Yes, to live all of life, to live it and to suffer it all without rebellion, without believing that it is made better by being made painless, this presented itself clearly to his dying eyes, as the greatest courage and the greatest wisdom. And to cheat pain while he waited, he reviewed his latest theories; he dreamed of a means of utilizing suffering by transforming it into action, into work. If it be true that man feels pain more acutely according as he rises in the scale of civilization, it is also certain that he becomes stronger through it, better armed against it, more capable of resisting it. The organ, the brain which works, develops and grows stronger, provided the equilibrium between the sensations which it receives and the work which it gives back be not broken. Might not one hope, then, for a humanity in which the amount of work accomplished would so exactly equal the sum of sensations received, that suffering would be utilized and, as it were, abolished?
The sun had risen, and Pascal was confusedly revolving these distant hopes in his mind, in the drowsiness produced by his disease, when he felt a new attack coming on. He had a moment of cruel anxiety-was this the end? Was he going to die alone? But at this instant hurried footsteps mounted the stairs, and a moment later Ramond entered, followed by Martine. And the patient had time to say before the attack began: