When Dr. Raynal came next day on his tri-weekly visit, he was glad to see the girl.
He broached the great question which he had not dared debate with Billet, whether the poor woman should receive the Last Sacrament. Billet was a rabid Voltairian, while the doctor was a scientist. But he believed it his duty in such cases to warn the family of the dying and let them settle it.
Catherine was pious and attached little importance to the wrangles between her father and the priest.
But the abbé was one of the sombre school, who would have been an inquisitor in Spain. When he found the sufferer unconscious, he said that he could not give absolution to those unable to confess, and went out again.
There was no use applying elsewhere as he was monarch over this parish.
Catherine accepted the refusal as still another grief and went on with her cares as daughter and mother for eight or nine days and nights.
As she was watching by her mother, frail bark sinking deeper and deeper on Eternity's sea, the door opened, and Pitou appeared on the sill.
He came from Paris that morning. Catherine shuddered to see him, fearing that her father was dead. But his countenance, without being what you would call gay, was not that of the bearer of bad news. Indeed, Billet was mending; since a few days the doctor had answered for him: that morning he had been moved from the hospital to the doctor's house.
Pitou feared for Catherine, now. His opinion was that the moment Billet learned what he was sure to ask, how his wife was, he would start for home.
What would it be if he found Catherine there?