Throughout the month of October, Germinie obstinately refused to take to
her bed. Each day, however, she was weaker and more helpless than the
day before. She was hardly able to ascend the flight of stairs that led
to her sixth floor, dragging herself along by the railing. One day she
fell on the stairs: the other servants picked her up and carried her to
her chamber. But that did not stop her; the next day she went downstairs
again, with the fitful gleam of strength that invalids commonly have in
the morning. She prepared mademoiselle's breakfast, made a pretence of
working, and kept moving about the apartment, clinging to the chairs and
dragging herself along. Mademoiselle took pity on her; she forced her to
lie down on her own bed. Germinie lay there half an hour, an hour, wide
awake, not speaking, but with her eyes open, fixed, and staring into
vacancy like the eyes of a person in severe pain.
One morning she did not come down. Mademoiselle climbed to the sixth
floor, turned into a narrow corridor in which the air was heavy with the
odors from servants' water-closets and at last reached Germinie's door,
No. 21. Germinie apologized for having compelled her to come up. It was
impossible for her to put her feet out of the bed. She had terrible
pains in her bowels and they were badly swollen. She begged mademoiselle
to sit down a moment and, to make room for her, removed the candlestick
that stood on the chair at the head of her bed.
Mademoiselle sat down and remained a few moments, looking about the
wretched room,--one of those where the doctor has to lay his hat on the
bed, and where there is barely room to die! It was a small attic room,
without a chimney, with a scuttle window in the sloping roof, which
admitted the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Old trunks, clothes
bags, a foot-bath, and the little iron bedstead on which Germinie's
niece had slept, were heaped up in a corner under the sloping roof. The
bed, one chair, a little disabled washstand with a broken pitcher,
comprised the whole of the furniture. Above the bed, in an imitation
violet-wood frame, hung a daguerreotype of a man.
The doctor came during the day. "Aha! peritonitis," he said, when
mademoiselle described Germinie's condition.
He went up to see the sick woman. "I am afraid," he said, when he came
down, "that there's an abscess in the intestine communicating with an
abscess in the bladder. It's a serious case, very serious. You must tell
her not to move about much in her bed, to turn over with great care.
She might die suddenly in horrible agony. I suggested to her to go to
Lariboisiere,--she agreed at once. She seemed to have no repugnance at
all. But I don't know how she will bear the journey. However, she has
such an unlimited stock of energy; I have never seen anything like it.
To-morrow morning you shall have the order of admission."
When mademoiselle went up to Germinie's room again, she found her
smiling in her bed, gay as a lark at the idea of going away.
"It's a matter of six weeks at most, mademoiselle," said she.