"What, dead! But you never informed me of it! If I told you of all the trouble that has been taken, of all that had to be undone and done again, and the discussions and the papers and the writing! Are you quite sure that he is dead ?" "Oh! yes, he is dead.

He has been dead a month." "Dead a month! Well, we could not know; you yourself gave us no sign of life.

Ah! _mon Dieu_! what a worry that he should be dead.

We shall now be obliged to undo everything again!" "He is dead, madame.

It is true that I ought to have informed you of it.
But that doesn't alter the fact--he is dead." Dead! that word which kept on returning, the thought too, that for a month past she had been busying herself for a corpse, quite froze her, brought her to the very depths of despair, like an omen of the cold death into which she herself must soon descend, in the shroud of her last passion.