Madame de Jonquiere had
tried a dozen times to keep her from fidgeting, but had not been able to
induce her to remain still, with joined hands and closed eyes.
Fortunately, the other patients gave her no anxiety; most of them were
either so relieved or so weary that they were already dozing off. Elise
Rouquet, however, had bought herself a pocket mirror, a large round one,
in which she did not weary of contemplating herself, finding herself
quite pretty, and verifying from minute to minute the progress of her
cure with a coquetry which, now that her monstrous face was becoming
human again, made her purse her lips and try a variety of smiles. As for
Sophie Couteau, she was playing very prettily; for finding that nobody
now asked to examine her foot, she had taken off her shoe and stocking of
her own accord, repeating that she must surely have a pebble in one or
the other of them; and as her companions still paid no attention to that
little foot which the Blessed Virgin had been pleased to visit, she kept
it in her hands, caressing it, seemingly delighted to touch it and turn
it into a plaything.
M. de Guersaint had meantime risen from his seat, and, leaning on the low
partition between the compartments, he was glancing at M. Sabathier, when
all of a sudden Marie called: "Oh! father, father, look at this notch in
the seat; it was the ironwork of my box that made it!"
The discovery of this trace rendered her so happy that for a moment she
forgot the secret sorrow which she seemed anxious to keep to herself.
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