Toward the close of the Carnival, which came shortly after, Madame de Grangeville, as the result of wearing a much too decollete costume at a ball, was seized with inflammation of the lungs; and a week after taking to her bed, she realized that she would never leave it again.
Thereupon a maternal sentiment sprang up in that woman"s heart for the first time; for thus far she had lived solely for herself. Hastily writing a few words in a trembling hand, she begged the count to be kind enough to send her daughter to her, as she would like to embrace her before she breathed her last.
But the count said to his wife"s messenger:
"When a person has twice spurned her child, she must not hope that that child will close her eyes. It is too late now for Violette to know her mother."
A few days after Madame de Grangeville"s death, the Comte de Brevanne resumed his name and his t.i.tle, and there was an end of Monsieur Malberg.
The Glumeau family continues to give private theatricals in its little wood, but Chambourdin is not allowed to seat ladies on the branches of trees.
Little Saint-Arthur, having squandered his last sou with Mademoiselle Zizi Dutaillis, considered himself too fortunate to have found another place as clerk in a dry-goods shop, where he has resumed his own name and has become Benoit Canard as before. But the young actress is a good-hearted girl; she still allows her former friend to come to see her sometimes, and on those occasions it is she who invites him to breakfast.
As for Chicotin, he insists upon remaining a messenger. Witnessing the happiness of Georget and Violette, he says to himself:
"They owe it partly to me; but I am perfectly sure that if I were in hard luck they would give me a share of their good fortune."