“No, no, don’t give her ether,” exclaimed Helene, warned by the odor.  “It drives her mad.”

The two had now scarcely strength enough to keep the child under control.  Her frame was racked and distorted, raised by the heels and the nape of the neck, as if bent in two.  But she fell back again and began tossing from one side of the bed to the other.  Her fists were clenched, her thumbs bent against the palms of her hands.  At times she would open the latter, and, with fingers wide apart, grasp at phantom bodies in the air, as though to twist them.  She touched her mother’s shawl and fiercely clung to it.  But Helene’s greatest grief was that she no longer recognized her daughter.  The suffering angel, whose face was usually so sweet, was transformed in every feature, while her eyes swam, showing balls of a nacreous blue.

“Oh, do something, I implore you!” she murmured.  “My strength is exhausted, sir.”

She had just remembered how the child of a neighbor at Marseilles had died of suffocation in a similar fit.  Perhaps from feelings of pity the doctor was deceiving her.  Every moment she believed she felt Jeanne’s last breath against her face; for the child’s halting respiration seemed suddenly to cease.  Heartbroken and overwhelmed with terror, Helene then burst into tears, which fell on the body of her child, who had thrown off the bedclothes.

The doctor meantime was gently kneading the base of the neck with his long supple fingers.  Gradually the fit subsided, and Jeanne, after a few slight twitches, lay there motionless.  She had fallen back in the middle of the bed, with limbs outstretched, while her head, supported by the pillow, inclined towards her bosom.  One might have thought her an infant Jesus.  Helene stooped and pressed a long kiss on her brow.

“Is it over?” she asked in a whisper.  “Do you think she’ll have another fit?”

The doctor made an evasive gesture, and then replied: 

“In any case the others will be less violent.”

He had asked Rosalie for a glass and water-bottle.  Half-filling the glass with water, he took up two fresh medicine phials, and counted out a number of drops.  Helene assisted in raising the child’s head, and the doctor succeeded in pouring a spoonful of the liquid between the clenched teeth.  The white flame of the lamp was leaping up high and clear, revealing the disorder of the chamber’s furnishings.  Helene’s garments, thrown on the back of an arm-chair before she slipped into bed, had now fallen, and were littering the carpet.  The doctor had trodden on her stays, and had picked them up lest he might again find them in his way.  An odor of vervain stole through the room.  The doctor himself went for the basin, and soaked a linen cloth in it, which he then pressed to Jeanne’s temples.

“Oh, madame, you’ll take cold!” expostulated Rosalie as she stood there shivering.  “Perhaps the window might be shut?  The air is too raw.”