ld never open to them again. And if Francoise was amused by the look
of consternation on my aunt's face whenever she saw, from her bed, any
of these people in the Rue du Saint-Esprit, who looked as if they were
coming to see her, or heard her own door-bell ring, she would laugh far
more heartily, as at a clever trick, at my aunt's devices (which never
failed) for having them sent away, and at their look of discomfiture
when they had to turn back without having seen her; and would be filled
with secret admiration for her mistress, whom she felt to be superior
to all these other people, inasmuch as she could and did contrive not to
see them. In short, my aunt stipulated, at one and the same time, that
whoever came to see her must approve of her way of life, commiserate
with her in her sufferings, and assure her of an ultimate recovery.

In all this Eulalie excelled. My aunt might say to her twenty times in
a minute: "The end is come at last, my poor Eulalie!", twenty times
Eulalie would retort with: "Knowing your illness as you do, Mme.
Octave, you will live to be a hundred, as Mme. Sazerin said to me only
yesterday." For one of Eulalie's most rooted beliefs, and one that the
formidable list of corrections which her experience must have compiled
was powerless to eradicate, was that Mme. Sazerat's name was really Mme.
Sazerin.

"I do not ask to live to a hundred," my aunt would say, for she
preferred to have no definite limit fixed to the number of her days.

And since, besides this, Eulalie knew, as no one else knew, how to
distract my aunt without tiring her, her visits, which took place
regularly every Sunday, unless something unforeseen occurred to prevent
them, were for my aunt a pleasure the prospect of which kept her on
those days in a state of expectation, appetising enough to begin with,
but at once changing to the agony of a hunger too long unsatisfied if
Eulalie were a minute late in coming. For, if unduly prolonged, the
rapture of waiting for Eulalie became a torture, and my aunt would never
cease from looking at the time, and yawning, and complaining of each of
her symptoms in turn. Eulalie's ring, if it sounded from the front door
at the very end of the day, when she was no longer expecting it, would
almost make her ill. For the fact was that on Sundays she thought of
nothing else than this visit, and the moment that our luncheon was ended
Francoise would become impatient for us to leave the dining-room so t