You may be sure that you would never find a medicine like this in the store at La Pipe." "It cannot make her worse ?" Maria asked, some doubt lingering.

"It is not a poison, or anything of that sort ?" With one voice, in an indignant tone, the three men protested: "Do harm?
Tiny pills no bigger than that!" "My brother took nearly a box of them, and according to his account it was only good they did him." When Eutrope departed he left the box of pills; the sick woman had not yet agreed to try them, but her objections grew weaker with their urging.

In the middle of the night she took a couple, and two more in the morning, and as the hours passed they all waited in confidence of the virtue of the medicine to declare itself.

But toward midday they had to bow to the facts: she was no easier and did not cease her moaning.

By evening the box was empty, and at the falling of the night her groans were filling the household with anguished distress, all the keener as they had no medicine now in which to place their trust.
Maria was up several times in the night, aroused by her mother's more piercing cries; she always found her lying motionless on her side, and this position seemed to increase the suffering and the stiffness, so that her groans were pitiful to hear.
"What ails you, mother?
Are you not feeling any better ?" "Ah God, how I suffer! How I do suffer! I cannot stir myself, not the least bit, and even so the pain is as bad as ever.