He had always hunted like a madman. It
was thus "the matins of Paris" began, in which not religious zealots
only assisted, but the thieves, the wanton, the unemployed, the
reckless children, les enfants massacreurs like those seen dragging
an insulted dead body to the Seine, greed or malice or the desire for
swift settlement of some long-pending law-suit finding here an
opportunity. A religious pretext had brought into sudden evidence
all the latent ferocities of a corrupt though dainty civilisation,
and while the stairways of the Louvre, the streets, [128] the vile
trap-doors of Paris, run blood, far away at Deux-manoirs Gaston
watches as the light creeps over the silent cornfields, the last
sense of it in those aged eyes now ebbing softly away. The village
priest, almost as aged, assists patiently with his immemorial
consolations at this long, leisurely, scarce perceptible ending to a
long, leisurely life, on the quiet double-holiday morning.*
The wild news of public disaster, penetrating along the country roads
now bristling afresh with signs of universal war, seemed of little
consequence in comparison with that closer grief at home, which made
just then the more effective demand on his sympathy, till the thought
came of the position of Colombe--his wife left behind there in Paris.
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