for future scientific treatises; and people of whose very existence she was unaware read the daily bulletins of her condition with closest eagerness.

[179]

IV.

It was a few minutes after twelve o’clock when Dr. Lommel reentered the ward. Mère Marchette lay apparently sleeping, but as he approached her bedside the old eyes opened with a piercing and eager question. The young man shook his head, smiling tenderly.

It

“Not quite yet, Mère Marchette,” he said; “there are still some minutes to wait.”

He sat down beside the bed and laid his fingers on her wrist. The pulse was so faint that he could scarcely feel it, but it was steady. For some minutes he remained quiet, with his eyes fixed on the poor old face before him. There came into his mind the thought of what this woman’s life had been: her childhood and youth in the hut of a Norman peasant; of what her own home might have been when she became a wife[180] and mother; of the desolation which had come upon her in the death of all her family save only Pierre; of the strange fate that had brought her to Paris; of the terrible wrench which her old heart must have felt when her grandson was taken from her; and of the pathetic patience with which she had borne privation, loneliness, and suffering.

[180]

He knew only the outlines of her history, since Mère Marchette had spoken little of herself. What her feelings might have been he could only imagine: the old woman could not have told her mental experiences; she had never even analyzed them. Unless he had been a peasant and a mother himself, Lommel could not have divined Mère Marchette’s emotions; he could only reflect what he should have felt in her place. He said to himself at last that, after all, the circumstances which made Mère Marchette’s lot so pathetic must also have deadened her sensibilities and so have softened her suffering.

He sighed and looked at his watch. His assistant had gone to the railway station to meet Pierre, and the time he had fixed for their return was already past by five minutes. He felt again of his patient’s pulse, with a terrible dread lest after all the young soldier[181] should arrive too late. The artery throbbed more feebly, but still steadily; and at his touch the sick woman opened her eyes with the old questioning look.

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