she promptly retorted: "Madame Volmar isn't strong,
she must have gone to the hotel to rest. We must let her sleep."

Then she apportioned the beds among the ladies present, allotting two to
each of them; and this done they all finished taking possession of the
place, hastening up and down and backwards and forwards in order to
ascertain where the offices, the linen-room, and the kitchens were
situated.

"And the dispensary?" then asked one of the ladies.

But there was no dispensary. There was no medical staff even. What would
have been the use of any?--since the patients were those whom science had
given up, despairing creatures who had come to beg of God the cure which
powerless men were unable to promise them. Logically enough, all
treatment was suspended during the pilgrimage. If a patient seemed likely
to die, extreme unction was administered. The only medical man about the
place was the young doctor who had come by the white train with his
little medicine chest; and his intervention was limited to an endeavour
to assuage the sufferings of those patients who chanced to ask for him
during an attack.

As it happened, Sister Hyacinthe was just bringing Ferrand, whom Sister
Saint-Francois had kept with her in a closet near the linen-room which he
proposed to make his quarters. "Madame," said he to Madame de Jonquiere,
"I am entirely at your disposal. In case of need you will only have to
ring for me."

She barely listened to him, however, engaged as she was in a quarrel with
a young priest belonging to the management with reference to a deficiency
of certain utensils. "Certainly, monsieur, if we should need a soothing
draught," she answered, and then, reverting to her discussion, she went
on: "Well, Monsieur l'Abbe, you must certainly get me four or five more.
How can we possibly manage with so few? Things are bad enough as it is."

Ferrand looked and listened, quite bewildered by the extraordinary
behaviour of the people amongst whom he had been thrown by chance since
the previous day. He who did not believe, who was only present out of
friendship and charity, was amazed at this extraordinary scramble of
wretchedness and suffering rushing towards the hope of happiness. And, as
a medical man of the new school, he was altogether upset by the careless
neglect of precautions, the contempt which was shown for the most simple
teachings of science, in the certainty which was apparently felt that, if
Heaven should so w