Ah! the dear friend of infancy, the dear
tenderness of long ago, so she would at last be the beautiful and
charming woman that she had promised to be as a young girl when, in the
little garden at Neuilly, she had looked so gay and pretty beneath the
tall trees flecked with sunlight!
The crowd continued to applaud her furiously, a huge wave of people
accompanied her; and all remained awaiting her egress, swarming in a
fever before the door, when she had entered the office, whither Pierre
only was admitted with her.
That particular afternoon there were few people at the Verification
Office. The small square room, with its hot wooden walls and rudimentary
furniture, its rush-bottomed chairs, and its two tables of unequal
height, contained, apart from the usual staff only some five or six
doctors, seated and silent. At the tables were the inspector of the
piscinas and two young Abbes making entries in the registers, and
consulting the sets of documents; while Father Dargeles, at one end,
wrote a paragraph for his newspaper. And, as it happened, Doctor Bonamy
was just then examining Elise Rouquet, who, for the third time, had come
to have the increasing cicatrisation of her sore certified.
"Anyhow, gentlemen," exclaimed the doctor, "have you ever seen a lupus
heal in this way so rapidly? I am aware that a new work has appeared on
faith healing in which it is stated that certain sores may have a nervous
origin. Only that is by no means proved in the case of lupus, and I defy
a committee of doctors to assemble and explain mademoiselle's cure by
ordinary means.
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