“No. Why do you ask?”
“Because I should like it to be in Pere-la-Chaise. I went there once with Agricola and his mother. What a fine view there is!—and then the trees, the flowers, the marble—do you know the dead are better lodged—than the living—and—”
“What is the matter, sister?” said Cephyse to her companion, who had stopped short, after speaking in a slow voice.
“I am giddy—my temples throb,” was the answer. “How do you feel?”
“I only begin to be a little faint; it is strange—the effect is slower with me than you.”
“Oh! you see,” said Mother Bunch, trying to smile, “I was always so forward. At school, do you remember, they said I was before the others. And, now it happens again.”
“I hope soon to overtake you this time,” said Cephyse.
What astonished the sisters was quite natural. Though weakened by sorrow and misery, the Bacchanal Queen, with a constitution as robust as the other was frail and delicate, was necessarily longer than her sister in feeling the effects of the deleterious vapor. After a moment’s silence, Cephyse resumed, as she laid her hand on the head she still held upon her knees, “You say nothing, sister! You suffer, is it not so?”
“No,” said Mother Bunch, in a weak voice; “my eyelids are heavy as lead—I am getting benumbed—I feel that I speak more slowly—but I have no acute pain. And you, sister?”
“Whilst you were speaking, I felt giddy—and now my temples throb violently.”