This feeling for his patient was infectious, as all true sentiments are; Monsieur and Madame Auffray’s house, so long as Pierrette lived in it, was peaceful and still. Even the children, who of old had had such famous games with Pierrette, understood, with childlike grace, that they were not to be noisy or troublesome. They made it a point of honor to be good because Pierrette was ill.
Monsieur Auffray’s house is in the upper town, below the ruined castle; built, indeed, on one of the cliff-like knolls formed by the overthrow of the old ramparts. From thence the residents have a view over the valley as they walk in a little orchard supported by the thick walls rising straight up from the lower town. The roofs of the houses rise to the level of the wall that upholds this garden. Along this terrace is a walk ending at the glass-door of Monsieur Auffray’s study. At the other end are a vine-covered arbor and a figtree, sheltering a round table, a bench, and some chairs, all painted green.
Pierrette had a room over that of her new guardian. Madame Lorrain slept there on a camp-bed by her grandchild’s side. From her window Pierrette could see the beautiful valley of Provins, which she hardly knew—she had so rarely been out of the Rogrons’ sinister dwelling. Whenever it was fine, she liked to drag herself, on her grandmother’s arm, as far as this arbor. Brigaut, who now did no work, came three times a day to see his little friend; he was absorbed in grief, which made him indifferent to life; he watched for Monsieur Martener with the eagerness of a spaniel, always went in with him and came out with him.
It would be difficult to imagine all the follies everyone was ready to commit for the dear little invalid. Her grandmother, drunk with grief, hid her despair; she showed the child the same smiling face as at Pen-Hoël. In her wish to delude herself, she made her a Breton cap such as Pierrette had worn when she came to Provins, and put it on her; the girl then looked to her more like herself; she was sweet to behold, with her face framed in the aureole of cambric edged with starched lace. Her face, as white as fine white porcelain, her forehead on which suffering set a semblance of deep thoughtfulness, the purity of outline refined by sickness, the slowness and occasional fixity of her gaze, all made Pierrette a master-work of melancholy.
The child was waited on with fanatical devotion; she was so tender, so loving. Madame Martener had sent her piano to Madame Auffray, her sister, thinking it might amuse Pierrette, to whom music was rapture. It was a poem to watch her listening to a piece by Weber, Beethoven, or Hérold, her eyes raised to heaven in silence, regretting, no doubt, the life she felt slipping from her. Monsieur Péroux the curé and Monsieur Habert, her two priestly comforters, admired her pious resignation.
Is it not a strange fact, worthy of the attention alike of philosophers and of mere observers, that a sort of seraphic perfection is characteristic of youths and maidens marked amid the crowd with the red cross of death, like saplings in a forest? He who has witnessed such a death can never remain or become an infidel. These beings exhale, as it were, a heavenly fragrance, their looks speak of God, their voice is eloquent in the most trivial speech, and often sounds like a divine instrument, expressing the secrets of futurity. When Monsieur Martener congratulated Pierrette on having carried out some disagreeable prescription, this angel would say in the presence of all, and with what a look!—
“I wish to live, dear Monsieur Martener, less for my own sake than for my grandmother’s, for my poor Brigaut’s, and for you all, who will be sorry when I die.”
The first time she took a walk, in the month of November, under a bright Martinmas sun, escorted by all the family, Madame Auffray asked her if she were tired.
“Now that I have nothing to bear but the pain God sends me, I can endure it. I find strength to bear suffering in the joy of being loved.”
This was the only time she ever alluded, even so remotely, to her horrible martyrdom at the Rogrons’; she never spoke of them; and as the remembrance could not fail to be painful, no one mentioned their name.
“Dear Madame Auffray,” said she one day at noon on the terrace, while gazing at the valley lighted up by brilliant sunshine and dressed in the russet tints of autumn, “my dying days in your house will have brought me more happiness than all the three years before.”
Madame Auffray looked at her sister, Madame Martener, and said to her in a whisper:
“How she would have loved!”
And, indeed, Pierrette’s tone and look gave her words unutterable meaning.
Monsieur Martener kept up a correspondence with Doctor Bianchon, and tried no serious treatment without his approbation. He hoped first to restore the girl to normal health, and then to enable the abscess to discharge itself through the ear. The more acute her pain was, the more hopeful he felt. With regard to the first point he had some success, and that was a great triumph. For some days Pierrette recovered her appetite, and could satisfy it with substantial food, for which her unhealthy state had hitherto given her great aversion; her color improved, but the pain in her heal was terrible. The doctor now begged the great physician, his consultee, to come to Provins. Bianchon came, stayed two days, and advised an operation; he threw himself into all poor Martener’s anxiety, and went himself to fetch the famous Desplein. So the operation was performed by the greatest surgeon of ancient or modern times; but this terrible augur said to Martener as he
