“Yes, yes, it is arranged,” she replied. “The undertaker will be here at eight o’clock.”
Duroy having sighed out the words, “Poor fellow,” she, too, gave a long sigh of heartrending resignation.
They did not look at the body so often now, already accustomed to the idea of it, and beginning to mentally consent to the decease which but a short time back had shocked and angered them—them who were mortals, too. They no longer spoke, continuing to keep watch in befitting fashion without going to sleep. But towards midnight Duroy dozed off the first. When he woke up he saw that Madame Forestier was also slumbering, and having shifted to a more comfortable position, he reclosed his eyes, growling: “Confound it all, it is more comfortable between the sheets all the same.”
A sudden noise made him start up. The nurse was entering the room. It was broad daylight. The young wife in the armchair in front of him seemed as surprised as himself. She was somewhat pale, but still pretty, fresh-looking, and nice, in spite of this night passed in a chair.
Then, having glanced at the corpse, Duroy started and exclaimed: “Oh, his beard!” The beard had grown in a few hours on this decomposing flesh as much as it would have in several days on a living face. And they stood scared by this life continuing in death, as though in presence of some fearful prodigy, some supernatural threat of resurrection, one of these startling and abnormal events which upset and confound the mind.
They both went and lay down until eleven o’clock. Then they placed Charles in his coffin, and at once felt relieved and soothed. They had sat down face to face at lunch with an aroused desire to speak of the livelier and more consolatory matters, to return to the things of life again, since they had done with the dead. Through the wide-open window the soft warmth of spring flowed in, bearing the perfumed breath of the bed of pinks in bloom before the door.