e a dying child, and Madame Vetu, a prey to
terrible agony, devoured by her disease, sat motionless, and kept her
lips tightly closed, her face distorted, haggard, and almost black. The
noise which Pierre had heard had been occasioned by Madame de Jonquiere,
who whilst cleansing a basin had dropped the large zinc water-can. And,
despite their torment, this had made the patients laugh, like the simple
souls they were, rendered puerile by suffering. However, Sister
Hyacinthe, who rightly called them her children, children whom she
governed with a word, at once set them saying the chaplet again, pending
the Angelus, which would only be said at Chatellerault, in accordance
with the predetermined programme. And thereupon the "Aves" followed one
after the other, spreading into a confused murmuring and mumbling amidst
the rattling of the coupling irons and noisy growling of the wheels.

Pierre had meantime relapsed into his reverie, and beheld himself as he
had been at six-and-twenty, when ordained a priest. Tardy scruples had
come to him a few days before his ordination, a semi-consciousness that
he was binding himself without having clearly questioned his heart and
mind. But he had avoided doing so, living in the dizzy bewilderment of
his decision, fancying that he had lopped off all human ties and feelings
with a voluntary hatchet-stroke. His flesh had surely died with his
childhood's innocent romance, that white-skinned girl with golden hair,
whom now he never beheld otherwise than stretched upon her couch of
suffering, her flesh as lifeless as his own. And he had afterwards made
the sacrifice of his mind, which he then fancied even an easier one,
hoping as he did that determination would suffice to prevent him from
thinking. Besides, it was too late, he could not recoil at the last
moment, and if when he pronounced the last solemn vow he felt a secret
terror, an indeterminate but immense regret agitating him, he forgot
everything, saving a divine reward for his efforts on the day when he
afforded his mother the great and long-expected joy of hearing him say
his first mass.

He could still see the poor woman in the little church of Neuilly, which
she herself had selected, the church where the funeral service for his
father had been celebrated; he saw her on that cold November morning,
kneeling almost alone in the dark little chapel, her hands hiding her
face as she continued weeping whilst he raised the Host. It was there