ise Rouquet's case interested him still more; for it had now
become evident that the lupus, the sore which was eating away her face,
was showing signs of cure. She had continued bathing her face at the
miraculous fountain, and had just come from the Verification Office,
where Doctor Bonamy had triumphed. Ferrand, quite surprised, went and
examined the sore, which, although still far from healed, was already
paler in colour and slightly desiccated, displaying all the symptoms of
gradual cure. And the case seemed to him so curious, that he resolved to
make some notes upon it for one of his old masters at the medical
college, who was studying the nervous origin of certain skin diseases due
to faulty nutrition.

"Have you felt any pricking sensation?" he asked.

"Not at all, monsieur," she replied. "I bathe my face and tell my beads
with my whole soul, and that is all."

La Grivotte, who was vain and jealous, and ever since the day before had
been going in triumph among the crowds, thereupon called to the doctor.
"I say, monsieur, I am cured, cured, cured completely!"

He waved his hand to her in a friendly way, but refused to examine her.
"I know, my girl. There is nothing more the matter with you."

Just then Sister Hyacinthe called to him. She had put her sewing down on
seeing Madame Vetu raise herself in a frightful fit of nausea. In spite
of her haste, however, she was too late with the basin; the sick woman
had brought up another discharge of black matter, similar to soot; but,
this time, some blood was mixed with it, little specks of violet-coloured
blood. It was the hemorrhage coming, the near end which Ferrand had been
dreading.

"Send for the superintendent," he said in a low voice, seating himself at
the bedside.

Sister Hyacinthe ran for Madame de Jonquiere. The linen having been
counted, she found her deep in conversation with her daughter Raymonde,
at some distance from Madame Desagneaux, who was washing her hands.

Raymonde had just escaped for a few minutes from the refectory, where she
was on duty. This was the roughest of her labours. The long narrow room,
with its double row of greasy tables, its sickening smell of food and
misery, quite disgusted her. And taking advantage of the half-hour still
remaining before the return of the patients, she had hurried up-stairs,
where, out of breath, with a rosy face and shining eyes, she had thrown
her arms around her mother's neck.

"Ah! mamma," she cried,