As soon as Madame Angelin had clasped Marianne's hands with her own
trembling fingers, she also uttered in low, stammering accents, those
despairing words: "Ah! what a frightful misfortune, an only son!"
Her eyes filled with tears, and she would not sit down before going for a
moment to see the body in the adjoining room. When she came back, sobbing
in her handkerchief, she sank into an armchair between Marianne and her
husband. He remained there motionless, staring fixedly with his dim eyes.
And silence fell again throughout the lifeless house, whither the rumble
of the works, now deserted, fireless and frozen, ascended no longer.
But Beauchene, followed by Blaise, at last made his appearance. The heavy
blow he had received seemed to have made him ten years older. It was as
if the heavens had suddenly fallen upon him. Never amid his conquering
egotism, his pride of strength and his pleasures, had he imagined such a
downfall to be possible. Never had he been willing to admit that Maurice
might be ill--such an idea was like casting a doubt upon his own
strength; he thought himself beyond the reach of thunderbolts; misfortune
would never dare to fall on him.
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