She no longer spoke, no longer evinced any impatience, but had recovered her serenity and relied on Heaven.

From time to time she would simply glance towards the platform to see if Father Massias were coming.
"Look at him, Gustave," said M.Vigneron to his son; "he must be consumptive." The lad, whom scrofula was eating away, whose hip was attacked by an abscess, and in whom there were already signs of necrosis of the vertebrae, seemed to take a passionate interest in the agony he thus beheld.

It did not frighten him, he smiled at it with a smile of infinite sadness.
"Oh! how dreadful!" muttered Madame Chaise, who, living in continual terror of a sudden attack which would carry her off, turned pale with the fear of death.
"Ah! well," replied M.Vigneron, philosophically, "it will come to each of us in turn.

We are all mortal." Thereupon, a painful, mocking expression came over Gustave's smile, as though he had heard other words than those--perchance an unconscious wish, the hope that the old aunt might die before he himself did, that he would inherit the promised half-million of francs, and then not long encumber his family.
"Put the boy down now," said Madame Vigneron to her husband.

"You are tiring him, holding him by the legs like that." Then both she and Madame Chaise bestirred themselves in order that the lad might not be shaken.