Father Piot, always white, gentle and murmurous, has shrunk a little; more and more he leans towards the tomb.

Both of them proceed in tiny steps.
"They're going to cure her, it seems.

They're seeing to it seriously." "Yes--the extraordinary secret remedy they say they're going to try." "No, it's not that now.

It's the new doctor who's come to live here, and he says, they say, that he's going to see about it." "Poor little angel!" The almost blind child, whose Christian name alone one knows, and whose health is the object of so much solicitude, goes stiffly by, as if she were dumb also, and deaf to all the prayers that go on with her.
After the service some one comes forward and begins to speak.

He is an old man, an officer of the Legion of Honor; his voice is weak but his face noble.
He speaks of the Dead, whose day this is.