Then the sick-nurse began to talk and to tell her tales likely to
terrify her weak and dying mind. "Some minutes before one dies the
Devil appears," she said, "to all. He has a broom in his hand, a
saucepan on his head and he utters loud cries. When anybody had seen
him, all was over, and that person had only a few moments longer to
live"; and she enumerated all those to whom the Devil had appeared that
year: Josephine Loisel, Eulalie Ratier, Sophie Padagnau, Seraphine
Grospied.
Mother Bontemps, who was at last most disturbed in mind, moved about,
wrung her hands, and tried to turn her head to look at the other end of
the room. Suddenly La Rapet disappeared at the foot of the bed. She
took a sheet out of the cupboard and wrapped herself up in it; then she
put the iron pot on to her head, so that its three short bent feet rose
up like horns, took a broom in her right hand and a tin pail in her
left, which she threw up suddenly, so that it might fall to the ground
noisily.
Certainly when it came down, it made a terrible noise. Then, climbing
on to a chair, the nurse showed herself, gesticulating and uttering
shrill cries into the pot which covered her face, while she menaced the
old peasant woman, who was nearly dead, with her broom.
Terrified, with a mad look on her face, the dying woman made a
superhuman effort to get up and escape; she even got her shoulders and
chest out of bed; then she fell back with a deep sigh. All was over,
and La Rapet calmly put everything back into its place; the broom into
the corner by the cupboard, the sheet inside it, the pot on to the
hearth, the pail on to the floor, and the chair against the wall. Then
with a professional air, she closed the dead woman's enormous eyes, put
a plate on the bed and poured some holy water into it, dipped the twig
of boxwood into it, and kneeling down, she fervently repeated the
prayers for the dead, which she knew by heart, as a matter of business.
When Honore returned in the evening, he found her praying. He
calculated immediately that she had made twenty sous out of him, for
she had only spent three days and one night there, which made five
francs altogether, instead of the six which he owed her.