And the whole neighborhood
gossiped endlessly about the old mad gentleman who had let himself die of
wretchedness by the side of a perfect treasure, piled coin by coin upon a
table, and for twenty years past tendered to the portraits of his wife
and daughter, even as flowers might have been offered to their memory.
About six o'clock, when Mathieu reached the works, he found the place
terrified by the catastrophe. Ever since the morning he had been rendered
anxious by Morange's letter, which had greatly surprised and worried him
with that extraordinary story of Alexandre turning up once more, being
welcomed by Constance, and introduced by her into the establishment.
Plain as was the greater part of the letter, it contained some singularly
incoherent passages, and darted from one point to another with
incomprehensible suddenness. Mathieu had read it three times, indulging
on each occasion in fresh hypotheses of a gloomier and gloomier nature;
for the more he reflected, the more did the affair seem to him to be
fraught with menace. Then, on reaching the rendezvous appointed by
Morange, he found himself in presence of those bleeding bodies which
Victor Moineaud had just picked up and laid out side by side! Silent,
chilled to his bones, Mathieu listened to his son, Denis, who had
hastened up to tell him of the unexplainable misfortune, the two men
falling one atop of the other, first the old mad accountant, and then the
young fellow whom nobody knew and who seemed to have dropped from heaven.
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