She faltered in a state of utter confusion.
A voice from behind them said: "This station has a very great future before it. I have already obtained surprising effects."
It was Professor Remusot addressing his companion, Louise Oriol. This gentleman was small, with yellow, unkempt hair, and a frock-coat badly cut, the dirty look of a slovenly savant.
Professor Mas-Roussel, who gave his arm to Charlotte Oriol, was a handsome physician, without beard or mustache, smiling, well-groomed, hardly turning gray as yet, a little fleshy, and, with his smooth, clean-shaven face, resembling neither a priest nor an actor, as was the case with Doctor Latonne.
Next came the members of the Board, with Andermatt at their head, and the tall hats of old Oriol and his son towering above them.
Behind them came another row of tall hats, the medical body of Enval, among whom Doctor Bonnefille was not included, his place, indeed, being taken by two new physicians, Doctor Black, a very short old man almost a dwarf, whose excessive piety had surprised the whole district since the day of his arrival; then a very good-looking young fellow, very much given to flirtation, and wearing a small hat, Doctor Mazelli, an Italian attached to the person of the Duc de Ramas—others said, to the person of the Duchesse.
And behind them could be seen the public, a flood of people—bathers, peasants, and inhabitants of the adjoining towns.
The ceremony of blessing the springs was very short. The Abbé Litre sprinkled them one after the other with holy water, which made Doctor Honorat say that he was going to give them new properties with chloride of sodium. Then all the persons specially invited entered the large reading-room, where a collation had been served.
Paul said to Gontran: "How pretty the little Oriol girls have become!"
"They are charming, my dear fellow."