“She is cured, isn’t she?” the poor woman asked, feeling that she herself was dying.
La Grivotte heard her, and exclaimed triumphantly: “Oh, yes, madame, cured, cured, cured completely!”
For a moment Madame Vetu seemed overcome by a miserable feeling of grief, the revolt of one who will not succumb while others continue to live. But almost immediately she became resigned, and they heard her add very faintly, “It is the young ones who ought to remain.”
Then her eyes, which remained wide open, looked round, as though bidding farewell to all those persons, whom she seemed surprised to see about her. She attempted to smile as she encountered the eager gaze of curiosity which little Sophie Couteau still fixed upon her: the charming child had come to kiss her that very morning, in her bed. Elise Rouquet, who troubled herself about nobody, was meantime holding her hand-glass, absorbed in the contemplation of her face, which seemed to her to be growing beautiful, now that the sore was healing. But what especially charmed the dying woman was the sight of Marie, so lovely in her ecstasy. She watched her for a long time, constantly attracted towards her, as towards a vision of light and joy. Perhaps she fancied that she already beheld one of the saints of Paradise amid the glory of the sun.
Suddenly, however, the fits of vomiting returned, and now she solely brought up blood, vitiated blood, the colour of claret. The rush was so great that it bespattered the sheet, and ran all over the bed. In vain did Madame de Jonquière and Madame Désagneaux bring cloths; they were both very pale and scarce able to remain standing. Ferrand, knowing how powerless he was, had withdrawn to the window, to the very spot where he had so lately experienced such delicious emotion; and with an instinctive movement, of which she was surely unconscious, Sister Hyacinthe had likewise returned to that happy window, as though to be near him.
“Really, can you do nothing?” she inquired.
“No, nothing! She will go off like that, in the same way as a lamp that has burnt out.”
Madame Vetu, who was now utterly exhausted, with a thin red stream still flowing from her mouth, looked fixedly at Madame de Jonquière whilst faintly moving her lips. The lady-superintendent thereupon bent over her and heard these slowly uttered words:
“About my husband, madame—the shop is in the Rue Mouffetard—oh! it’s quite a tiny one, not far from the Gobelins.—He’s a clockmaker, he is; he couldn’t come with me, of course, having to attend to the business; and he will be very much put out when he finds I don’t come back.—Yes, I cleaned the jewelry and did the errands—” Then her voice grew fainter, her words disjointed by the death rattle, which began. “Therefore, madame, I beg you will write to him, because I haven’t done so, and now here’s the end.—Tell him my body had better remain here at Lourdes, on account of the expense.—And he must marry again; it’s necessary for one in trade—his cousin—tell him his cousin—”
The rest became a confused murmur. Her weakness was too great, her breath was halting. Yet her eyes continued open and full of life, amid her pale, yellow, waxy mask. And those eyes seemed to fix themselves despairingly on the past, on all that which soon would be no more: the little clockmaker’s shop hidden away in a populous neighbourhood; the gentle humdrum existence, with a toiling husband who was ever bending over his watches; the great pleasures of Sunday, such as watching children fly their kites upon the fortifications. And at last these staring eyes gazed vainly into the frightful night which was gathering.