"Fifteen francs."
"Very well. Make haste, now, my girl, because I am getting hungry."
Madame Cimme, looking out at the climbing flowers bathed in the sunlight, and at two pigeons making love on the roof opposite, said, with a wounded air: "It is unfortunate to have come for so sad an event. It would be nice in the country, to-day."
Her sister sighed without response, and Columbel murmured, moved perhaps by the thought of a walk:
"My leg plagues me awfully."
Little Joseph and the dog made a terrible noise, one shouting with joy and the other barking violently. They played at hide-and-seek around the three flower-beds, running after each other like mad.
The dying woman continued to call her children, chatting with each, imagining that she was dressing them, that she caressed them, that she was teaching them to read: "Come, Simon, repeat, A, B, C, D. You do not say it well; see, D, D, D, do you hear? Repeat, then——"
Cimme declared: "It is curious what she talks about at this time."
Then said Madame Columbel: "It would be better, perhaps, to go in there."
But Cimme dissuaded her from it: