She climbed up on the wheel and looked. For a moment she stood there, without seeming to understand, and staring stupidly at that purple face, half of which had been, as it were, wrenched downwards. The night was falling, and a great livid cloud, which turned the sky yellow, lit up the dying man as with the glow of a conflagration.
Then all at once, she burst into sobs, and ran out of sight to prepare her sister.
"Lise! Lise! Oh, my God!"
Jean, on remaining alone, hesitated. Still the old man could not be left lying in the cart. The basement of the house was three steps below ground, on the side of the square; and to descend into that dark hole seemed to him inconvenient. Then he bethought himself that, on the roadway side, to the left, another door opened level into the yard. It was a good-sized yard, enclosed by a quickset hedge; the turbid water of a pool took up two-thirds of it, and two-thirds of an acre of kitchen and fruit garden extended in the rear. Jean left Coco to himself, and the horse, of his own accord, entered and drew up before his stable, near the shed in which were the two cows.
Françoise and Lise ran up with tears and lamentations. The latter, confined four months previously, and now taken by surprise while suckling her infant, had, in her affright, kept him in her arms; and he howled too. Françoise again got on one wheel, while Lise climbed up on the other. Their lamentations grew deafening; and meantime Mouche, at the bottom of the cart, still kept up his laboured wheezing.
"Papa, answer; won't you? Say what's the matter. Oh, dear! what is the matter? Oh, dear! oh, dear! It's in your head, then, since you can't even speak? Papa, papa, do speak; do answer!"
"Come down. He'd better be got out of the trap," said Jean, sagely.
They gave no help, but only screamed the louder. Luckily a neighbour, Madame Frimat, came upon the scene, attracted by the noise. She was a tall, withered, bony old woman, who for two years had been nursing her paralytic husband, supporting him by cultivating in person, with the doggedness of a beast of burden, the single acre or so that they possessed. She was not at all put out, seeming to think the misadventure a matter of course, and she lent a helping hand as a man would have done. Jean took Mouche by the shoulders, and pulled him up until La Frimat was able to catch hold of his legs. Then they carried him into the house.
"Where's he to be put?" asked the old woman.