‘Just so,’ said the doctor, with the automatic jerk of a hireling whose neck has been put out of joint by perpetual acquiescence. Then followed an awkward pause, the conversation being, as it were, thrown out of gear by this sudden and unexpectedly violent effusion from a young fellow usually very civil and self-possessed. The sun was oppressive, and was reflected off the dry stone walls on each side of the steep road, up which the horses were toiling painfully, while the pebbles creaked under the wheels.
‘To show the kindness and pity of woman, I can vouch for the following.’ It was Védrine who spoke, his head thrown back and swaying as it rested on the hood of the carriage, his eyes half shut as he looked at some inward vision. ‘It was not at the great milliner’s. It was at the Hôtel-Dieu, in Bouchereau’s department. A rough, white-washed cell, an iron bedstead with all the clothes thrown off, and on it, stark naked, covered with sweat and foam, contorted and twisted like a clown with sudden springs and with yells that re-echoed through the fore-court of Notre Dame, a madman in the last agony. Beside the bed two women, one on either side, the Sister, and one of Bouchereau’s little lady-students, both quite young, yet with no disgust and no fear, both leaning over the poonwretch whom no one dared go near, wiping from his brow and mouth the sweat of his agony and the suffocating foam. The Sister was praying all the time; the other was not. But in the inspired look in the eyes of both, in the gentleness of the brave little hands which wiped away the madman’s foam right from under his teeth, in the heroic and maternal beauty of their unwearied movements, you felt that they were both very women. There is woman! It was enough to make a man fall on his knees and sob.’
‘Thank you, Védrine,’ said Freydet under his breath; he had been choking with the recollection of the dear one at Clos Jallanges. The doctor began his jerk and his ‘just so,’ but was cut short by the dry, incisive tones of Paul Astier.
‘Oh yes, sick nurses, I’ll allow. Sickly themselves, nothing gives them such pleasure as nursing, dressing, bathing their patients, handling hot towels and basins; and then there’s the power they exercise over the suffering and the weak.’ His voice hissed and rose to the pitch of his mother’s, while from his cold eye darted a little gleam of wickedness which made his companions wonder ‘what is up,’ and suggested to the doctor the sage reflection, ‘All very well to talk about a scratch, and swords of the Institute, but I should not care to be in the Prince’s skin.’
‘Now I’ll paint you a pendant to our friend’s chromo,’ sneered Paul. ‘As a specimen of feminine delicacy and faithfulness, take a little widow, who even in the burial vault of the departed, and on his very tombstone——’
‘The Ephesian Matron!’ broke in Védrine, ‘you want to tell us that!’ The discussion grew animated and ran on, still to an accompaniment of the jolting wheels, upon the never-failing topics of masculine discussion, woman and love.
‘Gentlemen, look,’ said the doctor, who from his place on the front seat saw two carriages coming up the hill at a quick trot. In the first, an open victoria, were the Prince’s seconds. Gomes stood up, and as he sat down again named them in a low and respectful tone, ‘the Marquis d’Urbin and General de Bonneuil of the Jockey Club—very good form—and my brother-surgeon, Aubouis.’ This Doctor Aubouis was another low-caste of the same stamp as Gomes; but as he had a ribbon his fee was five guineas. Behind was a little brougham in which, along with the inseparable Lavaux, was concealed D’Athis, desperately bored with the whole business. During five minutes the three vehicles went up the hill one behind another like a wedding or funeral procession, and nothing was heard but the sound of the wheels and the panting or snorting of the horses as they rattled their bits.
‘Pass them,’ said a haughty nasal voice.
‘By all means,’ said Paul, ‘they are going to see to our quarters.’ The wheels grazed on the narrow road, the seconds bowed, the doctors exchanged professional smiles. Then the brougham went by, showing behind the window glass, pulled up in spite of the heat, a morose motionless profile, as pale as a corpse. ‘He won’t be paler than that an hour hence, when they take him home with a hole in his side,’ thought Paul, and he pictured the exact thrust, feint No. 2, followed by a direct lunge straight in between the third and fourth ribs.
At the top of the hill the air was cooler, and laden with the scent of lime-flowers, acacias, and roses warm in the sun. Behind the low park railings sloped great lawns over which moved the mottled shadows of the trees. Presently was heard the bell of a garden gate.