'Oh dear! oh dear! what agony I am suffering!' repeated poor Chanteau. 'It is just as though a lot of dogs were gnawing at my feet.'
He was perpetually altering the position of his leg, hoping to gain some relief by the change, but he was still racked with agony, and each fresh movement drew another groan from him. Presently, as the paroxysms of his pain grew sharper, a continuous howl came from his lips. He shivered and grew quite feverish, and his throat was parched with a burning thirst.
Pauline had just glided into his room. She stood by his bed and gazed at him gravely, but did not give way to tears; though Madame Chanteau lost her head, distracted by her husband's cries and groans. Véronique wished to arrange the bed-clothes differently, as the sufferer found their weight intolerable, but as she was about to lay hold of them with her big awkward hands he screamed yet more loudly and forbade her to touch him. He was quite frightened of her, and said that she shook him as roughly as though he were a bundle of linen.
'Don't call for me again then, sir,' she said as she bounced angrily out of the room. 'If you won't let anybody help you, you must attend to yourself!'
Thereupon Pauline gently glided up to the bedside, and with delicate skilfulness lightened the pressure of the bed-clothes with her childish fingers. The sufferer felt a short respite from his agony, and accepted the girl's help with a smile.
'Thank you, my dear. Stay! stay! Ah! that fold there weighs five hundred pounds! Oh! not so quickly, my dear, you quite frightened me.'
Then his agony returned in full force again; and as his wife, trying to find some occupation in the room, first drew up the blinds and then bustled to his bedside and placed a cup on the little table, he grew still more querulous.
'Oh! do keep still; don't rush about so! You make everything shake and tremble. Every step you take is just like a blow on my head with a hammer.'
She made no attempt at apologising or soothing him. Matters always ended in this fashion, and he was left to suffer in solitude.