He fancied that there had been some fresh seizure or
swooning, but the suffering faces that he beheld were still the same,
ever contracted by the same expression of anxious waiting for the divine
succour which was so slow in coming. M. Sabathier was vainly striving to
get his legs into a comfortable position, whilst Brother Isidore raised a
feeble continuous moan like a dying child, and Madame Vetu, a prey to
terrible agony, devoured by her disease, sat motionless, and kept her
lips tightly closed, her face distorted, haggard, and almost black. The
noise which Pierre had heard had been occasioned by Madame de Jonquiere,
who whilst cleansing a basin had dropped the large zinc water-can. And,
despite their torment, this had made the patients laugh, like the simple
souls they were, rendered puerile by suffering. However, Sister
Hyacinthe, who rightly called them her children, children whom she
governed with a word, at once set them saying the chaplet again, pending
the Angelus, which would only be said at Chatellerault, in accordance
with the predetermined programme. And thereupon the "Aves" followed one
after the other, spreading into a confused murmuring and mumbling amidst
the rattling of the coupling irons and noisy growling of the wheels.
Pierre had meantime relapsed into his reverie, and beheld himself as he
had been at six-and-twenty, when ordained a priest. Tardy scruples had
come to him a few days before his ordination, a semi-consciousness that
he was binding himself without having clearly questioned his heart and
mind.
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