At two o'clock the next day the doctor brought the order for her
admission to Lariboisiere. The invalid was ready to start. Mademoiselle
suggested that they should send to the hospital for a litter. "Oh! no,"
said Germinie, hastily, "I should think I was dead." She was thinking of
her debts; she must show herself to her creditors on the street, alive,
and on her feet to the last!
She got out of bed. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil assisted her to put on
her petticoat and her dress. As soon as she left her bed, all signs of
life disappeared from her face, the flush from her complexion: it seemed
as if earth suddenly took the place of blood under her skin. She went
down the steep servants' stairway, clinging to the baluster, and reached
her mistress's apartments. She sat down in an arm-chair near the window
in the dining-room. She insisted upon putting on her stockings without
assistance, and as she pulled them on with her poor trembling hands, the
fingers striking against one another, she afforded a glimpse of her
legs, which were so thin as to make one shudder. The housekeeper,
meanwhile, was putting together in a bundle a little linen, a glass, a
cup, and a pewter plate, which she wished to carry with her. When that
was done, Germinie looked about her for a moment; she cast one last
glance around the room, a glance that seemed to long to take everything
away with her. Then, as her eyes rested on the door through which the
housekeeper had just gone out, she said to mademoiselle: "At all events
I leave a good woman with you."
She rose. The door closed noisily behind her, as if to say adieu, and,
supported by Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, who almost carried her, she
went down the five flights of the main stairway. At every landing she
paused to take breath. In the vestibule she found the concierge, who had
brought her a chair. She fell into it. The vulgar fellow laughingly
promised her that she would be well in six weeks. She moved her head
slightly as she said _yes_, a muffled _yes_.
She was in the cab, beside her mistress. It was an uncomfortable cab and
jolted over the pavements. She sat forward on the seat to avoid the
concussion of the jolting, and clung to the door with her hand. She
watched the houses pass, but did not speak. When they reached the
hospital gate, she refused to be carried. "Can you walk as far as that?"
said the concierge, pointing to the reception-room some sixty feet
distant. She made an affirmative sign and walked: it was a dead woman
walking, because she was determined to walk!
At last she reached the great hall, cold and stiff and clean and bare
and horrible, with a circle of wooden benches around the waiting litter.
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil led her to a straw chair near a glazed door.
A clerk opened the door, asked Mademoiselle de Varandeuil Germinie's
name and age, and wrote for a quarter of an hour, covering ten or more
sheets of paper with a religious emblem at the top. That done,
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil kissed her and turned to go; she saw an
attendant take her under the arms, then she saw no more, but turned and
fled, and, throwing herself upon the cushions of the cab, she burst into
sobs and gave vent to all the tears with which her heart had been
suffocated for an hour past. The driver on his box was amazed to hear
such violent weeping.