And at last these staring eyes gazed
vainly into the frightful night which was gathering.
A last time did Madame de Jonquiere lean over her, seeing that her lips
were again moving. There came but a faint breath, a voice from far away,
which distantly murmured in an accent of intense grief: "She did not cure
me."
And then Madame Vetu expired, very gently.
As though this were all that she had been waiting for, little Sophie
Couteau jumped from the bed quite satisfied, and went off to play with
her doll again at the far end of the ward. Neither La Grivotte, who was
finishing her bread, nor Elise Rouquet, busy with her mirror, noticed the
catastrophe. However, amidst the cold breath which seemingly swept by,
while Madame de Jonquiere and Madame Desagneaux--the latter of whom was
unaccustomed to the sight of death--were whispering together in
agitation, Marie emerged from the expectant rapture in which the
continuous, unspoken prayer of her whole being had plunged her so long.
And when she understood what had happened, a feeling of sisterly
compassion--the compassion of a suffering companion, on her side certain
of cure--brought tears to her eyes.
"Ah! the poor woman!" she murmured; "to think that she has died so far
from home, in such loneliness, at the hour when others are being born
anew!"
Ferrand, who, in spite of professional indifference, had also been
stirred by the scene, stepped forward to verify the death; and it was on
a sign from him that Sister Hyacinthe turned up the sheet, and threw it
over the dead woman's face, for there could be no question of removing
the corpse at that moment.
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