"Mother," she said, "don't you see how nice I look? Just see all the
trouble I've taken for you;" and joining her hands over her head, her
dress loose at the waist, she sank down on the pillows full length on
the sofa in a careless, languid attitude which was both graceful and sad
to see. Renée thought that the bed and the white sheets made her look
ill. She would not stay there, and gathered together all her remaining
strength to get up. She dressed slowly and heroically towards eleven
o'clock, taking a long time over it, stopping to get breath, resting her
arms over and over again, after holding them up to do her hair. She had
thrown a fichu of point-lace over her head, and was wearing a
dressing-gown of starched white piqué, with plenty of material in it,
falling in wide pleats. Her small feet were incased in low shoes, and
instead of rosettes she wore two little bunches of violets which
Chrétiennot brought her every morning. In order to look more alive, as
invalids do when they are up and dressed, she would stay there all day
in this white girlish toilette fragrant with violets.
"Oh, how odd it is when one is ill!" she said, looking down at herself
and then all round the room. "I don't like anything that is not pretty
now, just fancy! I couldn't wear anything ugly. Do you know I've thought
of something I want. You remember the little silver-mounted jug--so
pretty it was--we saw it in a jeweller's shop in the Rue Saint Honoré
when we had just gone out of the theatre for the interval. If it isn't
sold--if he still has it, you might let him send it. Oh, I know I'm
getting the most ruinous tastes--I warn you of that. I want to arrange
things here. I'm getting very difficult to please; in everything I have
the most luxurious ideas. I used not to be at all elegant in my tastes;
and now I have eyes for everything I wear, and for everything all round
me--oh, such eyes! There are certain colours that positively pain
me--just fancy--and others that I had never noticed before. It is being
ill that makes me like this--it must be that. It's so ugly to be ill;
and so it makes you like everything that is beautiful all the more."
With all this coquetry which the approach of death had brought to her,
these fancies and caprices, these little delicacies and elegancies,
other senses too seemed to come to Renée. She was becoming, and she felt
herself becoming, more of a woman. Under all the languor and indolence
caused by illness, her disposition, which had always been affectionate
but somewhat masculine and violent, grew gentler, more unbending, and
more calm. Gradually the ways, tastes, inclinations, and ideas--all the
signs of her sex, in fact--made their appearance to her. Her mind seemed
to undergo the same transformation. She gave up her impetuous way of
criticising and her daring speech. Occasionally she would use one of her
old expressions, and then she would say, smiling, "That is a bit of the
old Renée come back." She remembered speeches she had made, bold things
she had done, and her familiar manner with young men; she would no
longer dare to act and speak as in those old days. She was surprised,
and did not know herself in her new character. She had given up reading
serious or amusing books; she only cared now for works which set her
thinking, books with ideas. When her father talked to her about hunting
and the meets to which she had been and of those in store for her, it
gave her the sensation of being about to fall, and the very idea of
mounting a horse frightened her. All the emotions and weaknesses that
she felt were quite new to her. Flowers about which she had never
troubled much were now as dear to her as persons. She had never liked
needlework, and now that she had started to embroider a skirt, she
enjoyed doing it. She quite roused up and lived over again in the
memories of her early girlhood. She thought of the children with whom
she used to play, of the friends she had had, of different places to
which she had been, and of the faces of the girls in the same row with
her at her confirmation.