she said; "everything is very clean too. One can see that the Saint-Frai
Sisters have attended to things themselves. The reserve mattresses are in
the next room, however, and if madame will lend me a hand we can place
some of them between the beds at once.

"Oh, certainly!" exclaimed young Madame Desagneaux, quite excited by the
idea of carrying mattresses about with her weak slender arms.

It became necessary for Madame de Jonquiere to calm her. "By-and-by,"
said the lady-superintendent; "there is no hurry. Let us wait till our
patients arrive. I don't much like this ward, it is so difficult to air.
Last year I had the Sainte-Rosalie Ward on the first floor. However, we
will organise matters, all the same."

Some other lady-hospitallers were now arriving, quite a hiveful of busy
bees, all eager to start on their work. The confusion which so often
arose was, in fact, increased by the excessive number of nurses, women of
the aristocracy and upper-middle class, with whose fervent zeal some
little vanity was blended. There were more than two hundred of them, and
as each had to make a donation on joining the Hospitality of Our Lady of
Salvation, the managers did not dare to refuse any applicants, for fear
lest they might check the flow of alms-giving. Thus the number of
lady-hospitallers increased year by year. Fortunately there were among
them some who cared for nothing beyond the privilege of wearing the red
cloth cross, and who started off on excursions as soon as they reached
Lourdes. Still it must be acknowledged that those who devoted themselves
were really deserving, for they underwent five days of awful fatigue,
sleeping scarcely a couple of hours each night, and living in the midst
of the most terrible and repulsive spectacles. They witnessed the death
agonies, dressed the pestilential sores, cleaned up, changed linen,
turned the sufferers over in their beds, went through a sickening and
overwhelming labour to which they were in no wise accustomed. And thus
they emerged from it aching all over, tired to death, with feverish eyes
flaming with the joy of the charity which so excited them.

"And Madame Volmar?" suddenly asked Madame Desagneaux. "I thought we
should find her here."

This was apparently a subject which Madame de Jonquiere did not care to
have discussed; for, as though she were aware of the truth and wished to
bury it in silence, with the indulgence of a woman who compassionates
human wretchedness,