Then his hands began to
tremble and he burst into oaths.
"Thunder and blazes! What again is this? Here's the boy dying now!
Everything's going to the devil!"
But his heart dilated and tears appeared in his eyes. Unable to remain
standing, he sank upon a chair and again obstinately read the telegram;
"Your son dead--Your son dead," as if seeking something else, the
particulars, indeed, which the message did not contain. Perhaps the boy
had died before his mother's arrival. Or perhaps she had arrived just
before he died. Such were his stammered comments. And he repeated a score
of times that she had taken the train at ten minutes past eleven and must
have reached Batignolles about half-past twelve. As she had handed in the
telegram at twenty minutes past one it seemed more likely that she had
found the lad already dead.
"Curse it! curse it!" he shouted; "a cursed telegram, it tells you
nothing, and it murders you! She might, at all events, have sent
somebody. I shall have to go there. Ah the whole thing's complete, it's
more than a man can bear!"
Lepailleur shouted those words in such accents of rageful despair that
Mathieu, full of compassion, made bold to intervene.
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