They were about to tell each other all the soft things which
they had not dared to confide to the reverberations of the well, when
Silvere, hearing a slight noise, started, and, turning pale, dropped
Miette's hands. He had just seen aunt Dide standing before him erect and
motionless on the threshold of the doorway.
The grandmother had come to the well by chance. And on perceiving, in
the old black wall, the white gap formed by the doorway which Silvere
had left wide open, she had experienced a violent shock. That open gap
seemed to her like a gulf of light violently illumining her past. She
once more saw herself running to the door amidst the morning brightness,
and crossing the threshold full of the transports of her nervous love.
And Macquart was there awaiting her. She hung upon his neck and pressed
against his bosom, whilst the rising sun, following her through the
doorway, which she had left open in her hurry, enveloped them with
radiance. It was a sudden vision which roused her cruelly from the
slumber of old age, like some supreme chastisement, and awakened a
multitude of bitter memories within her. Had the well, had the entire
wall, disappeared beneath the earth, she would not have been more
stupefied. She had never thought that this door would open again. In her
mind it had been walled up ever since the hour of Macquart's death. And
amidst her amazement she felt angry, indignant with the sacrilegious
hand that had penetrated this violation, and left that white open space
agape like a yawning tomb.
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