y houses, knelt to old Spricht as if he were the Pope himself. The
Marquise de Roca-Nera took her young daughters to him, and all but asked
him to bless them!

'Just so,' said the doctor, with the automatic jerk of a hireling whose
neck has been put out of joint by perpetual acquiescence. Then followed
an awkward pause, the conversation being, as it were, thrown out of gear
by this sudden and unexpectedly violent effusion from a young fellow
usually very civil and self-possessed. The sun was oppressive, and was
reflected off the dry stone walls on each side of the steep road, up
which the horses were toiling painfully, while the pebbles creaked under
the wheels.

'To show the kindness and pity of woman, I can vouch for the following.'
It was Vedrine who spoke, his head thrown back and swaying as it rested
on the hood of the carriage, his eyes half shut as he looked at some
inward vision. 'It was not at the great milliner's. It was at the
Hotel-Dieu, in Bouchereau's department. A rough, white-washed cell, an
iron bedstead with all the clothes thrown off, and on it, stark naked,
covered with sweat and foam, contorted and twisted like a clown with
sudden springs and with yells that re-echoed through the fore-court of
Notre Dame, a madman in the last agony. Beside the bed two women, one on
either side, the Sister, and one of Bouchereau's little lady-students,
both quite young, yet with no disgust and no fear, both leaning over the
poonwretch whom no one dared go near, wiping from his brow and mouth the
sweat of his agony and the suffocating foam. The Sister was praying all
the time; the other was not. But in the inspired look in the eyes of
both, in the gentleness of the brave little hands which wiped away the
madman's foam right from under his teeth, in the heroic and maternal
beauty of their unwearied movements, you felt that they were both very
women. There is woman! It was enough to make a man fall on his knees and
sob.'

'Thank you, Vedrine,' said Freydet under his breath; he had been choking
with the recollection of the dear one at Clos Jallanges. The doctor
began his jerk and his 'just so,' but was cut short by the dry, incisive
tones of Paul Astier.

'Oh yes, sick nurses, I'll allow. Sickly themselves, nothing gives them
such pleasure as nursing, dressing, bathing their patients, handling
hot towels and basins; and then there's the power they exercise over the
suffering and the weak.' His voice hissed and rose t