With fixed eyes
and convulsed features, the sick woman lay extended upon her back. She
seemed dead, save for the sudden starts, which shook her at intervals,
and disarranged the bedclothes.
Above her head was placed a little vessel, filled with ice water, which
fell drop by drop upon her forehead, covered with large bluish spots.
The table and mantel-piece were covered with little pots, medicine
bottles, and half-emptied glasses. At the foot of the bed, a piece of
rag stained with blood showed that the doctor had just had recourse to
leeches.
Near the fireplace, where was blazing a large fire, a nun of the order
of St. Vincent de Paul was kneeling, watching a saucepan. She was a
young woman, with a face whiter than her cap. Her immovably placid
features, her mournful look, betokened the renunciation of the flesh,
and the abdication of all independence of thought.
Her heavy grey costume hung about her in large ungraceful folds. Every
time she moved, her long chaplet of beads of coloured box-wood, loaded
with crosses and copper medals, shook and trailed along the floor with a
noise like a jingling of chains.
Dr. Herve was seated on a chair opposite the bed, watching, apparently
with close attention, the nun's preparations.
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