ely necessary that she
should be there, to keep watch on mademoiselle and prevent anyone from
coming near her. It was necessary, too, that she should show herself,
that the quarter should see her, and that she should not appear to her
creditors with the aspect of a dead woman. She must make a pretence of
being strong, she must assume a cheerful, lively demeanor, she must
impart confidence to the whole street with the doctor's studied words,
with a hopeful air, and with the promise not to die. She must appear at
her best in order to reassure her debtors and to prevent apprehensions
on the subject of money from ascending the stairs and applying to
mademoiselle.

She acted up to her part in this horrible, but necessary, comedy. She
was absolutely heroic in the way she made her whole body lie,--in
drawing up her enfeebled form to its full height as she passed the
shops, whose proprietors' eyes were upon her; in quickening her trailing
footsteps; in rubbing her cheeks with a rough towel before going out in
order to bring back the color of blood to them; in covering the pallor
of her disease and her death-mask with rouge.

Despite the terrible cough that racked her sleepless nights, despite her
stomach's loathing for food, she passed the whole winter conquering and
overcoming her own weakness and struggling with the ups and downs of her
disease.

At every visit that he made, the doctor told mademoiselle that he was
unable to find that any of her maid's vital organs were seriously
diseased. The lungs were a little ulcerated near the top; but people
recovered from that. "But her body seems worn out, thoroughly worn out,"
he said again and again, in a sad tone, with an almost embarrassed
manner that impressed mademoiselle. And he always had something to say,
at the end of his visit, about a change of air--about the country.

LX

When August arrived, the doctor had nothing but that to advise or
prescribe--the country. Notwithstanding the repugnance of elderly people
to move, to change their abode and the habits and regular hours of their
life; despite her domestic nature and the sort of pang that she felt at
being torn from her hearthstone, mademoiselle decided to take Germinie
into the country. She wrote to the _chick's_ daughter, who lived, with a
brood of children, on a small estate in a village of Brie, and who had
been, for many years, begging her to pay her a long visit. She requested
her hospitality for a mon