As for
Sophie Couteau, she was playing very prettily; for finding that nobody
now asked to examine her foot, she had taken off her shoe and stocking of
her own accord, repeating that she must surely have a pebble in one or
the other of them; and as her companions still paid no attention to that
little foot which the Blessed Virgin had been pleased to visit, she kept
it in her hands, caressing it, seemingly delighted to touch it and turn
it into a plaything.
M. de Guersaint had meantime risen from his seat, and, leaning on the low
partition between the compartments, he was glancing at M. Sabathier, when
all of a sudden Marie called: "Oh! father, father, look at this notch in
the seat; it was the ironwork of my box that made it!"
The discovery of this trace rendered her so happy that for a moment she
forgot the secret sorrow which she seemed anxious to keep to herself. And
in the same way as Madame Vincent had burst out sobbing on perceiving the
leather strap which her little girl had touched, so she burst into joy at
the sight of this scratch, which reminded her of her long martyrdom in
this same carriage, all the abomination which had now disappeared,
vanished like a nightmare. "To think that four days have scarcely gone
by," she said; "I was lying there, I could not stir, and now, now I come
and go, and feel so comfortable!"
Pierre and M.
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