“What is the matter with you?” inquired Gervaise, feeling anxious.
Lalie no longer groaned. She slowly raised her white eyelids, and tried to compel her lips to smile, although they were convulsed by a shudder.
“There’s nothing the matter with me,” she whispered very softly. “Really nothing at all.”
Then, closing her eyes again, she added with an effort:
“I made myself too tired during the last few days, and so I’m doing the idle; I’m nursing myself, as you see.”
But her childish face, streaked with livid stains, assumed such an expression of anguish that Gervaise, forgetting her own agony, joined her hands and fell on her knees near the bed. For the last month she had seen the girl clinging to the walls for support when she went about, bent double indeed, by a cough which seemed to presage a coffin. Now the poor child could not even cough. She had a hiccough and drops of blood oozed from the corners of her mouth.
“It’s not my fault if I hardly feel strong,” she murmured, as if relieved. “I’ve tired myself to-day, trying to put things to rights. It’s pretty tidy, isn’t it? And I wanted to clean the windows as well, but my legs failed me. How stupid! However, when one has finished one can go to bed.”
She paused, then said, “Pray, see if my little ones are not cutting themselves with the scissors.”
And then she relapsed into silence, trembling and listening to a heavy footfall which was approaching up the stairs. Suddenly father Bijard brutally opened the door. As usual he was far gone, and his eyes shone with the furious madness imparted by the vitriol he had swallowed. When he perceived Lalie in bed, he tapped on his thighs with a sneer, and took the whip from where it hung.
“Ah! by blazes, that’s too much,” he growled, “we’ll soon have a laugh. So the cows lie down on their straw at noon now! Are you poking fun at me, you lazy beggar? Come, quick now, up you get!”