Mother Bontemps, who had at last become disturbed
in mind, moved about, wrung her hands, and tried to
turn her head to look toward the end of the room.
Suddenly La Rapet disappeared at the foot of the bed.
She took a sheet out of the cupboard and wrapped herself
up in it; she put the iron saucepan on her head, so
that its three short bent feet rose up like horns,
and she took a broom in her right hand and a tin pail
in her left, which she threw up suddenly, so that
it might fall to the ground noisily.
When it came down, it certainly made a terrible noise.
Then, climbing upon a chair, the nurse lifted up the
curtain which hung at the bottom of the bed, and showed
herself, gesticulating and uttering shrill cries into
the iron saucepan which covered her face, while she
menaced the old peasant woman, who was nearly dead,
with her broom.
Terrified, with an insane expression on her face,
the dying woman made a superhuman effort to get up
and escape; she even got her shoulders and chest out
of bed; then she fell back with a deep sigh. All
was over, and La Rapet calmly put everything back
into its place; the broom into the corner by the cupboard
the sheet inside it, the saucepan on the hearth, the
pail on the floor, and the chair against the wall.
Then, with professional movements, she closed the
dead woman’s large eyes, put a plate on the
bed and poured some holy water into it, placing in
it the twig of boxwood that had been nailed to the
chest of drawers, and kneeling down, she fervently
repeated the prayers for the dead, which she knew
by heart, as a matter of business.
And when Honore returned in the evening he found her
praying, and he calculated immediately that she had
made twenty sows out of him, for she had only spent
three days and one night there, which made five francs
altogether, instead of the six which he owed her.
Old Baron des Ravots had for forty years been the
champion sportsman of his province. But a stroke
of paralysis had kept him in his chair for the last
five or six years. He could now only shoot pigeons
from the window of his drawing-room or from the top
of his high doorsteps.
He spent his time in reading.
He was a good-natured business man, who had much of
the literary spirit of a former century. He worshipped
anecdotes, those little risque anecdotes, and also
true stories of events that happened in his neighborhood.
As soon as a friend came to see him he asked:
“Well, anything new?”
And he knew how to worm out information like an examining
lawyer.
On sunny days he had his large reclining chair, similar
to a bed, wheeled to the hall door. A man servant
behind him held his guns, loaded them and handed them
to his master. Another valet, hidden in the bushes,
let fly a pigeon from time to time at irregular intervals,
so that the baron should be unprepared and be always
on the watch.
