She glued her ear to the shutter, breathing in what they said, absorbed in the torture of listening to them, pasturing her famished heart upon suffering. It was a cold, rainy winter’s night. She did not feel the cold or rain. All her senses were engaged in listening. The voice she detested seemed at times to grow faint and die away beneath kisses, and the notes it sang died in her throat as if stifled by lips placed upon the song. The hours passed. Germinie was still at her post. She did not think of going away. She waited, with no knowledge of what she was waiting for. It seemed to her that she must remain there always, until the end. The rain fell faster. The water from a broken gutter overhead beat down upon her shoulders. Great drops glided down her neck. An icy shiver ran up and down her back. The water dripped from her dress to the ground. She did not notice it. She was conscious of no pain in any of her limbs except the pain that flowed from her heart.
Well on toward morning there was a movement in the house, and footsteps approached the door. Germinie ran and hid in a recess in the wall some steps away, and from there saw a woman come out, escorted by a young man. As she watched them walk away, she felt something soft and warm on her hands that frightened her at first; it was a dog licking her, a great dog that she had held in her lap many an evening, when he was a puppy, in the crémière’s back shop.
“Come here, Molosse!” Jupillon shouted impatiently twice or thrice in the darkness.
The dog barked, ran back, returned and gamboled about her, and at last entered the house. The door closed. The voices and singing lured Germinie back to her former position against the shutter, and there she remained, drenched by the rain, allowing herself to be drenched, as she listened and listened, till morning, till daybreak, till the hour when the masons on their way to work, with their dinner loaf under their arms, began to laugh at her as they passed.
LVIII
Two or three days after that night in the rain, Germinie’s features were distorted with pain, her skin was like marble and her eyes blazing. She said nothing, made no complaints, but went about her work as usual.
“Here! girl, look at me a moment,” said mademoiselle, and she led her abruptly to the window. “What does all this mean? this look of a dead woman risen from the grave? Come, tell me honestly, are you sick? My God! how hot your hands are!”
She grasped her wrist, and in a moment threw it down.
“What a silly slut! you’re in a burning fever! And you keep it to yourself!”
“Why no, mademoiselle,” Germinie stammered. “I think it’s nothing but a bad cold. I went to sleep the other evening with my kitchen window open.”
“Oh! you’re a good one!” retorted mademoiselle; “you might be dying and you’d never as much as say: ‘Ouf!’ Wait.”
She put on her spectacles, and hastily moving her armchair to a small table by the fireplace, she wrote a few lines in her bold hand.
“Here,” said she, folding the note, “you will do me the favor to give this to your friend Adèle and have her send the concierge with it. And now to bed you go!”
But Germinie refused to go to bed. It was not worth while. She would not tire herself. She would sit down all day. Besides, the worst of her sickness was over; she was getting better already. And then it always killed her to stay in bed.
The doctor, summoned by mademoiselle’s note, came in the evening. He examined Germinie, and ordered the application of croton oil. The trouble in the chest was of such a nature that he could say nothing about it until he had observed the effect of his remedies.
He returned a few days later, sent Germinie to bed and sounded her chest for a long while.
“It’s a most extraordinary thing,” he said to mademoiselle, when he went downstairs; “she has had pleurisy upon her and hasn’t kept her bed for a moment! Is she made of iron, in Heaven’s name? Oh! the energy of some women! How old is she?”
“Forty-one.”
“Forty-one! Oh! it’s not possible. Are you sure? She looks fully fifty.”
“Ah! as to that, she looks as old as you please. What can you expect? Never in good health—always sick, disappointment, sorrow—and a disposition that can’t help tormenting itself.”
“Forty-one years old! it’s amazing!” the physician repeated.
After a moment’s reflection, he continued:
“So far as you know, is there any hereditary lung trouble in her family? Has she had any relatives who have died young?”
“She lost a sister by pleurisy; but she was older. She was forty-eight, I think.”
The doctor had become very grave. “However, the lung is getting freer,” he said, in an encouraging tone. “But it is absolutely necessary that she should have rest. And send her to me once a week. Let her come and see me. And let her take a pleasant day for it—a bright, sunny day.”
LIX
Mademoiselle talked and prayed and implored and scolded to no purpose: she could not induce Germinie to lay aside her work for a few days. Germinie would not even listen to the suggestion that she should have an assistant to do the heavier work. She declared that it was useless, impossible; that she could never endure the thought
