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Updated: June 13, 2025
And he came to his office every morning with a little smile on his face, in such wise that nothing in this man of regular methodical life revealed the collapse within him, all the ashes and smoldering fire which disaster had left in his heart. By degrees a link of some intimacy had been formed between Constance and Morange.
It vaguely seemed to him also that Morange was yielding to the same unreasoning despair as Valerie, and was almost willing that she should take the desperate course which she had hinted to Marianne. But it was a very serious matter, and Mathieu did not wish to be in any way mixed up in it. Having tried his best to pacify the cashier, he sought forgetfulness of these painful incidents in his work.
Would he, Morange so Mathieu wondered have clung like Beauchene to his former ideas? Would he still have defended the theory of the only child; that hateful, calculating theory which had cost him both his wife and his daughter? Mathieu could picture him flitting past, pale and distracted, with the step of a maniac hastening to some mysterious end, in which insanity would doubtless have its place.
But Beauchene abruptly appeared preceding the body, and he likewise was livid and beside himself, to such a degree did this sudden visit of death thrill him with fear, in his need of happy life. "Morange will have told you of the frightful catastrophe, my dear," said he. "Fortunately Denis was there, for the question of responsibility towards his family.
It was Morange, bareheaded and frock-coated; he had hastened thither at the first news with the same air as if he had been repairing to his office. He seemed to be at home; it was he who received the visitors in a scared way, overcome as he was by this sudden demise, which recalled to him his daughter's abominable death.
So have a little patience, some evening you shall come to dinner with me here, and we shall have the whole evening before us to chat at our ease. But ah! mon Dieu! if it were only true, if it were only the miracle at last!" More than three weeks elapsed before Morange heard anything further.
As a matter of fact, Morange had been carried away as by a storm, and, walking straight before him, had once more found himself on the Grenelle bridge, where Denis had one day saved him from the fascination of the water. And some force, some impulse had carried him again to the very same spot, and made him lean over the same parapet, gazing, in the same way as previously, at the flowing river.
On the morrow Morange displayed so much agitation that the wife of the door-porter of the house where he resided, a woman who was ever watching him, imparted her fears to her husband.
Not another word was exchanged; the spell of waiting continued amid the oppressive silence of the dim, closed room. When some ten minutes had elapsed, two other visitors arrived, a lady and a gentleman, whom the Froments could not at first recognize. Morange bowed and received them in his dazed way.
Amid this retired life, Constance, haunted as she was by her fixed idea, had no other occupation than that of watching the factory, and ascertaining what went on there day by day. Morange, whom she had made her confidant, gave her information in all simplicity almost every evening, when he came to speak to her for a moment after leaving his office.
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