On the visiting day, Thursday, mademoiselle started at half-past twelve
to go and see Germinie. It was her purpose to be at her bedside at the
moment the doors were thrown open, at one o'clock precisely. As she rode
through the streets she had passed through four days before, she
remembered the ghastly ride of Monday. It seemed to her as if she were
incommoding a sick person in the cab, of which she was the only
occupant, and she sat close in the corner in order to make room for the
memory of Germinie. In what condition should she find her? Should she
find her at all? Suppose her bed should be empty?
The cab passed through a narrow street filled with orange carts, and
with women sitting on the sidewalk offering biscuit for sale in baskets.
There was something unspeakably wretched and dismal in this open-air
display of fruit and cakes,--the delicacies of the dying, the _viaticum_
of invalids, craved by feverish mouths, longed for by the
death-agony,--which workingmen's hands, black with toil, purchase as
they pass, to carry to the hospital and offer death a tempting morsel.
Children carried them with sober faces, almost reverentially, and
without touching them, as if they understood.
The cab stopped before the gate of the courtyard. It was five minutes to
one. There was a long line of women crowding about the gate, women with
their working clothes on, sorrowful, depressed and silent. Mademoiselle
de Varandeuil took her place in the line, went forward with the others
and was admitted: they searched her. She inquired for Salle
Sainte-Josephine, and was directed to the second wing on the second
floor. She found the hall and the bed, No. 14, which was, as she had
been told, one of the last at the right. Indeed, she was guided thither,
as it were, from the farther end of the hall, by Germinie's smile--the
smile of a sick person in a hospital at an unexpected visit, which says,
so gently, as soon as you enter the room: "Here I am."
She leaned over the bed. Germinie tried to push her away with a gesture
of humility and the shamefacedness of a servant.
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil kissed her.
"Ah!" said Germinie, "the time dragged terribly yesterday. I imagined it
was Thursday and I longed so for you."
"My poor girl! How are you?"
"Oh! I'm getting on finely now--the swelling in my bowels has all gone.
I have only three weeks to stay here, mademoiselle, you'll see.
They talk about a month or six weeks, but I know better. And I'm very
comfortable here, I don't mind it at all. I sleep all night now. My! but
I was thirsty, when you brought me here Monday! They wouldn't give me
wine and water."
[Illustration: Chapter LXV
_One and all, after a moment's conversation, leaned over Germinie to
kiss her, and with every kiss Mademoiselle de Varandeuil could hear an
indistinct murmur as of words exchanged; a whispered question from those
who kissed, a hasty reply from her who was kissed._]
"What have you there to drink?"
"Oh! what I had at home--lime-water. Would you mind pouring me out some,
mademoiselle? their pewter things are so heavy!"
She raised herself with one arm by the aid of the little stick that hung
over the middle of the bed, and putting out the other thin, trembling
arm, left bare by the sleeve falling back from it, she took the glass
mademoiselle held out to her, and drank.
"There," said she when she had done, and she placed both her arms
outside the bed, on the coverlid.
"What a pity that I have to put you out in this way, my poor
demoiselle!" she continued. "Things must be in a horribly dirty state at
home!"
"Don't worry about that."
There was a moment's silence. A faint smile came to Germinie's lips. "I
am sailing under false colors," she said, lowering her voice; "I have
confessed so as to get well."
Then she moved her head on the pillow in order to bring her mouth nearer
to Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's ear:
"There are tales to tell here. I have a funny neighbor yonder." She
indicated with a glance and a movement of her shoulder the patient to
whom her back was turned. "There's a man who comes here to see her. He
talked to her an hour yesterday. I heard them say they'd had a child.
She has left her husband. He was like a madman, the man was, when he was
talking to her."
As she spoke, Germinie's face lighted up as if she were still full of
the scene of the day before, still stirred up and feverish with
jealousy, so near death as she was, because she had heard love spoken of
beside her!
Suddenly her expression changed. A woman came toward her bed. She seemed
embarrassed when she saw Mademoiselle de Varandeuil. After a few
moments, she kissed Germinie, and hurriedly withdrew as another woman
came up. The new-comer did the same, kissed Germinie and at once took
her leave. After the women a man came; then another woman. One and all,
after a moment's conversation, leaned over Germinie to kiss her, and
with every kiss Mademoiselle de Varandeuil could hear an indistinct
murmur as of words exchanged; a whispered question from those who
kissed, a hasty reply from her who was kissed.
"Well!" she said to Germinie, "I hope you are well taken care of!"
"Oh! yes," Germinie answered in a peculiar tone, "they take excellent
care of me!"
She had lost the animation that she displayed at the beginning of the
visit. The little blood that had mounted to her cheeks remained there in
one spot only. Her face seemed closed; it was cold and deaf, like a
wall. Her drawn-in lips were sealed, as it were. Her features were
concealed beneath the veil of infinite dumb agony. There was nothing
caressing or eloquent in her staring eyes, absorbed as they were and
filled with one fixed thought. You would have said that all exterior
signs of her ideas were drawn within her by an irresistible power of
concentration, by a last supreme effort of her will, and that her whole
being was clinging in desperation to a sorrow that drew everything to
itself.
The visitors she had just received were the grocer, the fish-woman, the
butter woman and the laundress--all her debts, incarnate! The kisses
were the kisses of her creditors, who came to keep on the scent of their
claims and to extort money from her death-agony!