As he walked along with an indifference to life
known only to those who have reached the last degree of wretchedness,
he thought of how, in India, the law ordained that widows should die;
he longed to die. He was not yet crushed; the fever of his grief was
still upon him. He reached his home and went up into the sacred
chamber; he saw his Clemence on the bed of death, beautiful, like a
saint, her hair smoothly laid upon her forehead, her hands joined, her
body wrapped already in its shroud. Tapers were lighted, a priest was
praying, Josephine kneeling in a corner, wept, and, near the bed, were
two men. One was Ferragus. He stood erect, motionless, gazing at his
daughter with dry eyes; his head you might have taken for bronze: he
did not see Jules.
The other man was Jacquet,--Jacquet, to whom Madame Jules had been
ever kind. Jacquet felt for her one of those respectful friendships
which rejoice the untroubled heart; a gentle passion; love without its
desires and its storms. He had come to pay his debt of tears, to bid a
long adieu to the wife of his friend, to kiss, for the first time, the
icy brow of the woman he had tacitly made his sister.
All was silence. Here death was neither terrible as in the churches,
nor pompous as it makes its way along the streets; no, it was death in
the home, a tender death; here were pomps of the heart, tears drawn
from the eyes of all. Jules sat down beside Jacquet and pressed his
hand; then, without uttering a word, all these persons remained as
they were till morning.
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