“I do not know, sir,” he said dejectedly, “you will see; my wife is sitting with her. In spite of all your care, I am very much afraid that death will come to empty my home for me.”
“Do not lose heart, Gasnier. Death is too busy to take up his abode in any dwelling.”
Benassis went into the house, followed by the father. Half an hour later he came out again. The mother was with him this time, and he spoke to her, “You need have no anxiety about her now; follow out my instructions; she is out of danger.”
“If you are growing tired of this sort of thing,” the doctor said to the officer, as he mounted his horse, “I can put you on the way to the town, and you can return.”
“No, I am not tired of it, I give you my word.”
“But you will only see cottages everywhere, and they are all alike; nothing, to outward seeming, is more monotonous than the country.”
“Let us go on,” said the officer.
They rode on in this way for several hours, and after going from one side of the canton to the other, they returned towards evening to the precincts of the town.
“I must just go over there,” the doctor said to Genestas, as he pointed out a place where a cluster of elm-trees grew. “Those trees may possibly be two hundred years old,” he went on, “and that is where the woman lives, on whose account the lad came to fetch me last night at dinner, with a message that she had turned quite white.”
“Was it anything serious?”