"Such enormous bunches of flowers in a sick room! why, there's enough there to kill her, and I'm not surprised that she is out of her head; take them all away at once, throw the flowers out of the window."
"You see, Mamzelle Violette adores flowers, and Mère Lamort, instead of leaving them in a corner of the courtyard, by the pump, where Violette always keeps them, she said yesterday: 'I'll just take two big bunches, and she'll enjoy looking at them as long as she is lying in her bed.'"
"Mère Lamort seems to me too well named; if that's the way that she takes care of sick people, I must congratulate her.—Take all these flowers away, my boy, and give the girl nothing to drink except a very weak infusion of linden, with a few orange leaves: I am no doctor, but I have an idea that that will be enough, and that she will be better to-morrow. But take all these flowers away, don't leave a single one here!"
While Chicotin hastily removed all the flowers from the vases, Roncherolle gazed at the sleeping girl and murmured:
"It would be a pity; she is very pretty, is this child. Where the devil have I seen that face?—Come, my boy, we'll let her sleep; I am going down to give Mère Lamort a talking to."
XXXVIII
THE NEIGHBOR'S VISIT
The next morning Chicotin appeared in Monsieur de Roncherolle's apartment with a radiant face, exclaiming:
"I've come to tell you, monsieur, that you fixed Mamzelle Violette up in fine shape; she ain't out of her head to-day, her fever is much less; in fact, she feels a great deal better; she told me to come and thank you and tell you that she'd come herself as soon as she gets up."
"Thank me! for what? Because I advised giving her linden tea to drink, and because I had the flowers taken out of her room? why, anybody would have said as much as that. Don't let the girl put herself out for such a trifle. However, as she is better, I will go up soon to see her, to bid her good-morning. I fancy that that is not forbidden now?"
"Oh, no! you're a friend of hers now, bourgeois."