"Are you not tired?" asked George, taking her hands. "If you like, we'll go away. We'll look for some place where we can rest. I'm afraid it may hurt you. We will go if you like."
"No, no; I am strong. I can stand it. Let us get nearer. Let us enter the church. You see, everybody is going there. Do you hear how they are shouting?" She was visibly suffering. Her mouth was convulsed, the muscles of her face contracted; and her hand constantly tormented George's arm. But her gaze never left the door of the Sanctuary, nor that veil of bluish smoke through which, by turns, scintillated and disappeared the little flames of the wax tapers.
"Do you hear how they are shouting?"
She staggered. The cries resembled those of a massacre, as if men and women were cutting each other's throats, were struggling in oceans of blood.
Colas said:
"They are asking favors."
The old man had not left his guests for an instant; he had taken a thousand pains to open a passage for them in the crowd, to make a little space about them.
"Do you want to go there?" he asked.
Hippolyte made up her mind.
"Yes, let us go."