all refused to
bathe her, and that she had been obliged to insist and beg and sob in
order to prevail upon them to do so, after receiving Father Fourcade's
express permission. And then it had all happened as she had previously
said it would. She had not been immersed in the icy water for three
minutes--all perspiring as she was with her consumptive rattle--before
she had felt strength returning to her like a whipstroke lashing her
whole body. And now a flaming excitement possessed her; radiant, stamping
her feet, she was unable to keep still.

"I am cured, my good gentlemen, I am cured!"

Pierre looked at her, this time quite stupefied. Was this the same girl
whom, on the previous night, he had seen lying on the carriage seat,
annihilated, coughing and spitting blood, with her face of ashen hue? He
could not recognise her as she now stood there, erect and slender, her
cheeks rosy, her eyes sparkling, upbuoyed by a determination to live, a
joy in living already.

"Gentlemen," declared Doctor Bonamy, "the case appears to me to be a very
interesting one. We will see."

Then he asked for the documents concerning La Grivotte. But they could
not be found among all the papers heaped together on the tables. The
young seminarists who acted as secretaries began turning everything over;
and the superintendent of the piscinas who sat in their midst himself had
to get up to see if these documents were in the "canterbury." At last,
when he had sat down again, he found them under the register which lay
open before him. Among them were three medical certificates which he read
aloud. All three of them agreed in stating that the case was one of
advanced phthisis, complicated by nervous incidents which invested it
with a peculiar character.

Doctor Bonamy wagged his head as though to say that such an _ensemble_ of
testimony could leave no room for doubt. Forthwith, he subjected the
patient to a prolonged auscultation. And he murmured: "I hear nothing--I
hear nothing." Then, correcting himself, he added: "At least I hear
scarcely anything."

Finally he turned towards the five-and-twenty or thirty doctors who were
assembled there in silence. "Will some of you gentlemen," he asked,
"kindly lend me the help of your science? We are here to study and
discuss these questions."

At first nobody stirred. Then there was one who ventured to come forward
and, in his turn subject the patient to auscultation. But instead of
declaring himself,