Agathe read the list.

The Descoings read nothing; she was struck down as by a thunderbolt.

At the change in her face, at the cry she gave, old Desroches and Joseph carried her to her bed.
Agathe went for a doctor.

The poor woman was seized with apoplexy, and she only recovered consciousness at four in the afternoon; old Haudry, her doctor, then said that, in spite of this improvement, she ought to settle her worldly affairs and think of her salvation.

She herself only uttered two words:-- "Three millions!" Old Desroches, informed by Joseph, with due reservations, of the state of things, related many instances where lottery-players had seen a fortune escape them on the very day when, by some fatality, they had forgotten to pay their stakes; but he thoroughly understood that such a blow might be fatal when it came after twenty years' perseverance.