She did the rooms as she had been accustomed to every
morning; she swept and dusted, and, towards eight
o’clock, prepared M. Lemonnier’s breakfast.
But she did not dare bring it to her master, knowing
too well how she would be received; she waited for
him to ring. But he did not ring. Nine o’clock,
then ten o’clock went by.
Celeste, not knowing what to think, prepared her tray
and started up with it, her heart beating fast.
She stopped before the door and listened. Everything
was still. She knocked; no answer. Then,
gathering up all her courage, she opened the door
and entered. With a wild shriek, she dropped the
breakfast tray which she had been holding in her hand.
In the middle of the room, M. Lemonnier was hanging
by a rope from a ring in the ceiling. His tongue
was sticking out horribly. His right slipper
was lying on the ground, his left one still on his
foot. An upturned chair had rolled over to the
bed.
Celeste, dazed, ran away shrieking. All the neighbors
crowded together. The physician declared that
he had died at about midnight.
A letter addressed to M. Duretdur was found on the
table of the suicide. It contained these words:
“I leave and entrust the child to you!”
For five months they had been talking of going to
take luncheon in one of the country suburbs of Paris
on Madame Dufour’s birthday, and as they were
looking forward very impatiently to the outing, they
rose very early that morning. Monsieur Dufour
had borrowed the milkman’s wagon and drove himself.
It was a very tidy, two-wheeled conveyance, with a
cover supported by four iron rods, with curtains that
had been drawn up, except the one at the back, which
floated out like a sail. Madame Dufour, resplendent
in a wonderful, cherry colored silk dress, sat by the
side of her husband.
The old grandmother and a girl sat behind them on
two chairs, and a boy with yellow hair was lying at
the bottom of the wagon, with nothing to be seen of
him except his head.
When they reached the bridge of Neuilly, Monsieur
Dufour said: “Here we are in the country
at last!” and at that signal his wife grew sentimental
about the beauties of nature. When they got to
the crossroads at Courbevoie they were seized with
admiration for the distant landscape. On the
right was Argenteuil with its bell tower, and above
it rose the hills of Sannois and the mill of Orgemont,
while on the left the aqueduct of Marly stood out
against the clear morning sky, and in the distance
they could see the terrace of Saint-Germain; and opposite
them, at the end of a low chain of hills, the new
fort of Cormeilles. Quite in the distance; a
very long way off, beyond the plains and village, one
could see the sombre green of the forests.
The sun was beginning to burn their faces, the dust
got into their eyes, and on either side of the road
there stretched an interminable tract of bare, ugly
country with an unpleasant odor. One might have
thought that it had been ravaged by a pestilence,
which had even attacked the buildings, for skeletons
of dilapidated and deserted houses, or small cottages,
which were left in an unfinished state, because the
contractors had not been paid, reared their four roofless
walls on each side.
