"No, no, don't leave him there. There is a bed in the next room. We will
take him up very gently with the mattress, and lay him with it on the
bed."
It was Maurice's room; it was the bed in which Maurice had died, and
which Constance with maternal piety had kept unchanged, consecrating the
room to her son's memory. But what could she say? How could she prevent
Blaise from dying there in his turn, killed by her?
The abomination of it all, the vengeance of destiny which exacted this
sacrilege, filled her with such a feeling of revolt that at the moment
when vertigo was about to seize her and the flooring began to flee from
beneath her feet, she was lashed by it and kept erect. And then she
displayed extraordinary strength, will, and insolent courage. When the
stricken man passed before her, her puny little frame stiffened and grew.
She looked at him, and her yellow face remained motionless, save for a
flutter of her eyelids and an involuntary nervous twinge on the left side
of her mouth, which forced a slight grimace. But that was all, and again
she became perfect both in words and gesture, doing and saying what was
necessary without lavishness, but like one simply thunderstruck by the
suddenness of the catastrophe.
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