About six o’clock
Haunted by remorse at having killed them while dreaming of making them rich , he reserved for them that money which they had so keenly desired , and which they would have spent with so much ardor . It was still and ever for them that he earned it , and he took it to them , lavished it upon them , never devoting even a tithe of it to any egotistical pleasure , absorbed as he was in his vision-fraught worship and eager to pacify and cheer their spirits . And the whole neighborhood gossiped endlessly about the old mad gentleman who had let himself die of wretchedness by the side of a perfect treasure , piled coin by coin upon a table , and for twenty years past tendered to the portraits of his wife and daughter , even as flowers might have been offered to their memory . About six o'clock , when Mathieu reached the works , he found the place terrified by the catastrophe . Ever since the morning he had been rendered anxious by Morange 's letter , which had greatly surprised and worried him with that extraordinary story of Alexandre turning up once more , being welcomed by Constance , and introduced by her into the establishment . Plain as was the greater part of the letter , it contained some singularly incoherent passages , and darted from one point to another with incomprehensible suddenness . Mathieu had read it three times , indulging on each occasion in fresh hypotheses of a gloomier and gloomier nature ; for the more he reflected , the more did the affair seem to him to be fraught with menace .