When she reached Lariboisière, she passed the concierge—a stout man reeking with life as one reeks with wine—passed through the corridors where pallid convalescents were gliding hither and thither, and rang at a door, veiled with white curtains, at the extreme end of the hospital. The door was opened: she found herself in a parlor, lighted by two windows, where a plaster cast of the Virgin stood upon an altar, between two views of Vesuvius, which seemed to shiver against the bare wall. Behind her, through an open door, came the voices of Sisters and little girls chattering together, a clamor of youthful voices and fresh laughter, the natural gayety of a cheery room where the sun frolics with children at play.
Mademoiselle asked to speak with the “mother” of Salle Sainte-Joséphine. A short, half-deformed Sister, with a kind, homely face, a face alight with the grace of God, came in answer to her request. Germinie had died in her arms. “She hardly suffered at all,” the Sister told mademoiselle; “she was sure that she was better; she felt relieved; she was full of hope. About seven this morning, just as her bed was being made, she suddenly began vomiting blood, and passed away without knowing that she was dying.” The Sister added that she had said nothing, asked for nothing, expressed no wish.
Mademoiselle rose, delivered from the horrible thoughts she had had. Germinie had been spared all the tortures of the death-agony that she had dreamed of. Mademoiselle was grateful for that death by the hand of God which gathers in the soul at a single stroke.
As she was going away an attendant came to her and said: “Will you be kind enough to identify the body?”
The body! The words gave mademoiselle a terrible shock. Without awaiting her reply, the attendant led the way to a high yellow door, over which was written: Amphitheatre. He knocked; a man in shirt sleeves, with a pipe in his mouth, opened the door and bade them wait a moment.
Mademoiselle waited. Her thoughts terrified her. Her imagination was on the other side of that awful door. She tried to anticipate what she was about to see. And her mind was so filled with confused images, with fanciful alarms, that she shuddered at the thought of entering the room, of recognizing that disfigured face among a number of others, if, indeed, she could recognize it! And yet she could not tear herself away; she said to herself that she should never see her again!
The man with the pipe opened the door: mademoiselle saw nothing but a coffin, the lid of which extended only to the neck, leaving Germinie’s face uncovered, with the eyes open, and the hair erect upon her head.
LXVII
Prostrated by the excitement and by this last spectacle, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took to her bed on returning home, after she had given the concierge the money for the purchase of a burial lot, and for the burial. And when she was in bed the things she had seen arose before her. The horrible dead body was still beside her, the ghastly face framed by the coffin. That never-to-be-forgotten face was engraved upon her mind; beneath her closed eyelids she saw it and was afraid of it. Germinie was there, with the distorted features of one who has been murdered, with sunken orbits and eyes that seemed to have withdrawn into their holes! She was there with her mouth still distorted by the vomiting that accompanied her last breath! She was there with her hair, her terrible hair, brushed back and standing erect upon her head!
Her hair!—that haunted mademoiselle more persistently than all the rest. The old maid thought, involuntarily, of things that had come to her ears when she was a child, of superstitions of the common people stored away in the background of her memory; she asked herself if she had not been told that dead people whose hair is like that carry a crime with them to the grave. And at times it was such hair as that that she saw upon that head, the hair of crime, standing on end with terror and stiffened with horror before the justice of Heaven, like the hair of the condemned man before the scaffold in La Grève!
On Sunday mademoiselle was too ill to leave her bed. On Monday she tried to rise and dress, in order to attend the funeral; but she was attacked with faintness, and was obliged to return to her bed.
LXVIII
“Well! is it all over?” said mademoiselle from her bed, as the concierge entered her room about eleven o’clock, on his return from the cemetery, with the black coat and the sanctimonious manner suited to the occasion.
“Mon Dieu, yes, mademoiselle. Thank God! the poor girl is out of pain.”
“Stay! I have no head today. Put the receipts and the rest of the money on my table. We will settle our accounts some other day.”
The concierge stood before her without moving or evincing any purpose to go, shifting from one hand to the other a blue velvet cap made from the dress of one of his daughters. After a moment’s reflection, he decided to speak.
“This burying is
