Then Marie again repeated her request in an entreating tone; whilst her father, M.de Guersaint, who had listened like one hugely amused, declared that they would all fall ill if the story were not continued.

And thereupon, seeing Madame de Jonquiere smile with an indulgent air, Sister Hyacinthe ended by consenting.
"Well, then," said she, "I will allow you another short quarter of an hour; but only a short quarter of an hour, mind.

That is understood, is it not?
For I should otherwise be in fault." Pierre had waited quietly without attempting to intervene.

And he resumed his narrative in the same penetrating voice as before, a voice in which his own doubts were softened by pity for those who suffer and who hope.
The scene of the story was now transferred to Lourdes, to the Rue des Petits Fosses, a narrow, tortuous, mournful street taking a downward course between humble houses and roughly plastered dead walls.

The Soubirous family occupied a single room on the ground floor of one of these sorry habitations, a room at the end of a dark passage, in which seven persons were huddled together, the father, the mother, and five children.