, clad in deep
mourning for her mother and reclining there with legs inert; whilst he,
also clad in black, in a cassock already, sat near her on an iron garden
chair. For five years she had been suffering. She was now eighteen, paler
and thinner than formerly, but still adorable with her regal golden hair,
which illness respected. He believed from what he had heard that she was
destined to remain infirm, condemned never to become a woman, stricken
even in her sex. The doctors, who failed to agree respecting her case,
had abandoned her. Doubtless it was she who told him these things that
dreary afternoon, whilst the yellow withered leaves rained upon them.
However, he could not remember the words that they had spoken; her pale
smile, her young face, still so charming though already dimmed by
regretfulness for life, alone remained present with him. But he realised
that she had evoked the far-off day of their parting, on that same spot,
behind the hedge flecked with sunlight; and all that was already as
though dead--their tears, their embrace, their promise to find one
another some day with a certainty of happiness. For although they had
found one another again, what availed it, since she was but a corpse, and
he was about to bid farewell to the life of the world? As the doctors
condemned her, as she would never be woman, nor wife, nor mother, he, on
his side, might well renounce manhood, and annihilate himself, dedicate
himself to God, to whom his mother gave him. And he still felt within him
the soft bitterness of that last interview: Marie smiling painfully at
memory of their childish play and prattle, and speaking to him of the
happiness which he would assuredly find in the service of God; so
penetrated indeed with emotion at this thought, that she had made him
promise that he would let her hear him say his first mass.

But the train was passing the station of Sainte-Maure, and just then a
sudden uproar momentarily brought Pierre's attention back to the carriage
and its occupants. He fancied that there had been some fresh seizure or
swooning, but the suffering faces that he beheld were still the same,
ever contracted by the same expression of anxious waiting for the divine
succour which was so slow in coming. M. Sabathier was vainly striving to
get his legs into a comfortable position, whilst Brother Isidore raised a
feeble continuous moan like a dying child, and Madame Vetu, a prey to
terrible agony, devoured by her di