Doctor Porquier scanned Marthe's face, and then, without making any further examination, he compressed his lips and made a vague gesture with his hands.
'My dear Madame Rougon,' he said, 'you must summon up your courage.'
Félicité burst into sobs.
'The end is at hand,' the doctor continued in a lower voice. 'I have been expecting this sad termination for a long time past; I must confess so much now. Both of poor Madame Mouret's lungs are diseased, and in her case phthisis has been complicated by nervous derangement.'
He took a seat, and a smile played about his lips, the smile of the polished doctor who thinks that even in the presence of death itself suave politeness is demanded of him.
'Don't give way and make yourself ill, my dear lady. The catastrophe was inevitable and any little accident might have hastened it. I should imagine that poor Madame Mouret must have been subject to coughing when she was very young; wasn't she? I should say that the germs of the disease have been spreading within her for a good many years past. Latterly, and especially within the last three years, phthisis has been making frightful strides in her. How pious and devotional she was! I have been quite touched to see her passing away in such sanctity. Well, well, the decrees of Providence are inscrutable; science is very often quite powerless.'
Seeing that Madame Rougon still continued to weep, he poured out upon her the tenderest consolations, and pressed her to take a cup of lime-flower water to calm herself.
'Don't distress yourself, I beg you,' he continued. 'I assure you that she has lost all sense of pain. She will continue sleeping as tranquilly as she is doing at present, and will only regain consciousness just before death. I won't leave you; I will remain here, though my services are quite unavailing. I shall stay, however, as a friend, my dear lady, as a friend.'
He settled himself comfortably for the night in an easy chair. Félicité grew a little calmer. When Doctor Porquier gave her to understand that Marthe had only a few more hours to live, she thought of sending for Serge from the Seminary, which was near at hand. She asked Rose to go there for him, but the cook at first refused.
'Do you want to kill the poor little fellow as well?' she exclaimed. 'It would be too great a shock for him to be called up in the middle of the night to come to see a dead woman. I won't be his murderer!'