Then, addressing Mme. Paulhat-Durand, she added:
"What do you expect? I am so constituted. I cannot bear to see people suffer. In the presence of misfortune I become utterly stupid. And at my age one does not change, you know. Come, my little one, I take you with me."
Just then a sudden cramp forced me to descend from my post of observation. I never saw Louise again.
The next day but one Mme. Paulhat-Durand had me ceremoniously ushered into the bureau, and, after having examined me in rather an embarrassing fashion, she said to me:
"Mademoiselle Célestine, I have a good place for you, a very good place. Only you have to go into the country,—oh! not very far."
"Into the country? I do not go there, you know."
She insisted.
"You do not know the country. There are excellent places in the country."
"Oh! excellent places! What a humbug!" I said. "In the first place, there are no good places anywhere."