Many people meantime were hastening to the water tap in order to
fill their pitchers, cans, and bottles. Madame Maze, who was of refined
tastes and careful of her person, thought of going to wash her hands
there; but just as she arrived she found Elise Rouquet drinking, and she
recoiled at sight of that disease-smitten face, so terribly disfigured
and robbed of nearly all semblance of humanity. And all the others
likewise shuddered, likewise hesitated to fill their bottles, pitchers,
and cans at the tap from which she had drunk.
A large number of pilgrims had now begun to eat whilst pacing the
platform. You could hear the rhythmical taps of the crutches carried by a
woman who incessantly wended her way through the groups. On the ground, a
legless cripple was painfully dragging herself about in search of nobody
knew what. Others, seated there in heaps, no longer stirred. All these
sufferers, momentarily unpacked as it were, these patients of a
travelling hospital emptied for a brief half-hour, were taking the air
amidst the bewilderment and agitation of the healthy passengers; and the
whole throng had a frightfully woeful, poverty-stricken appearance in the
broad noontide light.
Pierre no longer stirred from the side of Marie, for M. de Guersaint had
disappeared, attracted by a verdant patch of landscape which could be
seen at the far end of the station. And, feeling anxious about her, since
she had not been able to finish her broth, the young priest with a
smiling air tried to tempt her palate by offering to go and buy her a
peach; but she refused it; she was suffering too much, she cared for
nothing.
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