She was almost at the last gasp; her head had got too low, and purple blotches appeared upon her face. Pauline, imagining that her aunt was dying, rang the bell for Véronique; and it was as much as the two of them could do to raise her up and lay her properly on her pillows.
Then Pauline's own personal sufferings and heartaches disappeared amidst her intense grief. She thought no more about the last wound which her heart had received; all her passion and jealousy vanished in presence of that great wretchedness. Every other feeling became lost in one of deep pity, and she would have gladly endured injustice and insult and have sacrificed herself still more if by so doing she could only have given comfort and consolation to the others. She set herself bravely to bear the principal share of life's woes; and from that moment she never once gave way, but manifested beside her aunt's death-bed all the quiet resignation which she had shown when threatened by death herself. She was always ready; she never recoiled from anything. Even her old gentle affection came back to her; she forgave her aunt for all her mad violence during her paroxysms, and wept with pity at finding that she had gradually become insane; forcing herself to think of her as she had been in earlier years, loving her as she had done on that stormy evening when she had first come with her to Bonneville.
That day Doctor Cazenove did not call till after luncheon. An accident had detained him at Verchemont; a farmer there had broken his arm, and the Doctor had stayed to set it. After seeing Madame Chanteau he came down into the kitchen, and made no attempt to conceal his alarm. Lazare was sitting there by the fire, in that feverish idleness which preyed upon him.
'There is no more hope, is there?' he asked. 'I was reading Bouillaud's Treatise on the Diseases of the Heart again last night.'
Pauline, who had come downstairs with the Doctor, once more gave him an entreating look, which prompted him to interrupt the young man in his usual brusque fashion. Whenever an illness turned out badly, he always showed a little anger.
'Ah! the heart, my good fellow, the heart seems to be the only idea you have got! One can't be certain of anything. For my own part, I believe it's rather the liver that is affected. But, of course, when the machine gets out of order, everything in turn is more or less affected—the lungs, the stomach, and the heart itself. Instead of reading Bouillaud last night, which has only upset you, you would have done much better to go to sleep.'
This dictum of the Doctor's was like an order given to the house. In Lazare's presence it was always said that his mother was dying from a diseased liver; but he refused to believe it, and spent his sleepless hours in turning over the pages of his old books. He grew quite confused over the different symptoms, and the remark made by the Doctor that the various organs of the human body became successively deranged only served to increase his alarm.
'Well,' he said with difficulty, 'how long, then, do you think she will last?'
Cazenove made a gesture of doubt.
'A fortnight; perhaps a month. You had better not question me, for I might make a mistake, and then you would be right in saying that we know nothing and can do nothing. But the progress that the disease has made since yesterday is terrible.'