At last an armchair was brought from the drawing-room; the baroness was placed in it, carried slowly indoors, then upstairs, and laid on the bed. The cook was undressing her as best she could when the Widow Dentu came in, as if, like the priest, she had "smelt death," as the servants said. Joseph Couillard hurried off for the doctor, and the priest was going to fetch the holy oil, when the nurse whispered in his ear:
"You needn't trouble to go, Monsieur le curé. I have seen too much of death not to know that she is gone."
Jeanne, in desperation, begged them to tell her what she could do, what remedies they had better apply. The curé thought that anyhow he might pronounce an absolution, and for two hours they watched beside the lifeless, livid body, Jeanne, unable to contain her grief, sobbing aloud as she knelt beside the bed. When the door opened to admit the doctor, she thought that with him came safety and consolation and hope, and she rushed to meet him, trying to tell him, in a voice broken with sobs, all the details of the catastrophe.
"She was walking—like she does every day—and she seemed quite well, better even—than usual. She had eaten some soup and two eggs for lunch, and—quite suddenly, without any warning she fell—and turned black, like she is now; she has not moved since, and we have—tried everything to restore her to consciousness—everything—"
She stopped abruptly for she saw the nurse making a sign to the doctor to intimate that it was all over. Then she refused to understand the gesture, and went on anxiously:
"Is it anything serious? Do you think there is any danger?"
He answered at last:
"I very much fear that—that life is extinct. Be brave and try to bear up."
For an answer Jeanne opened her arms, and threw herself on her mother's body. Julien came in. He made no sign of grief or pity, but stood looking simply vexed; he had been taken too much by surprise to at once assume an expression of sorrow.
"I expected it," he whispered. "I knew she could not live long."