Just then, Gasparine, with her submissive air of a poor relation, fallen to the rank of a servant, brought her a cup of coffee and some bread and butter. She helped her to raise herself, propped her up against some cushions, and served her on a little tray covered with a napkin. And Rose, dressed in a little loose embroidered jacket, ate with a hearty appetite, amidst the linen, edged with lace. She was quite fresh, looking younger than ever, and very pretty, with her white skin, and short, fair, curly hair.
“Oh! the stomach is all right, it is not the stomach that is ailing,” she kept saying, as she soaked her slices of bread and butter.
Two tears dropped into her coffee. Then Gasparine scolded her.
“If you cry, I shall call Achille. Are you not pleased? are you not sitting there like a queen?”
When Madame Campardon had finished, and she again found herself alone with Octave, she was quite consoled. Out of coquetry, she again returned to the subject of death, but with the gentle gayety of a woman idling away the morning between her warm sheets. Well! she would go off all the same, when her turn came; only, they were right, she was not unhappy, she could let herself live; for, in point of fact, they spared her all the main cares of life.
Then, as the young man rose to leave, she added:
“Now, do try and come oftener? Amuse yourself well, don’t let the funeral make you too sad. One dies a trifle every day, the thing is to get used to it.”
It was the little maid Louise who opened the door to Octave at Madame Juzeur’s, on the same landing. She ushered him into the drawing-room, looked at him a moment as she laughed in her bewildered sort of way, and then ended by stating that her mistress was just finishing dressing. Madame Juzeur appeared almost at once, dressed in black, and looking gentler and more refined than ever in her mourning.
“I felt sure you would call this morning,” sighed she with a weary air. “All night long I have been dreaming and seeing you. It is impossible to sleep, you understand, with that corpse in the house!”
And she admitted that she had got up three times in the night to look under the furniture.