“When is the marriage?”

“We sign the contract on Tuesday, in five days’ time,” he replied.

Then still keeping her eyelids closed, as though she were speaking from the darkness and silence of her brain: 

“Well then, pet, see to what you’ve got to do.  As far as I’m concerned, I want everybody to be happy and comfortable.”

He took her hand and soothed her.  Yes, he would see about it; the important thing now was for her to rest.  And the revolt within him ceased, for this warm and slumberous sickroom, with its all-pervading scent of ether, had ended by lulling him into a mere longing for happiness and peace.  All his manhood, erewhile maddened by wrong, had departed out of him in the neighborhood of that warm bed and that suffering woman, whom he was nursing under the influence of her feverish heat and of remembered delights.  He leaned over her and pressed her in a close embrace, while despite her unmoved features her lips wore a delicate, victorious smile.  But Dr Boutarel made his appearance.

“Well, and how’s this dear child?” he said familiarly to Muffat, whom he treated as her husband.  “The deuce, but we’ve made her talk!”

The doctor was a good-looking man and still young.  He had a superb practice among the gay world, and being very merry by nature and ready to laugh and joke in the friendliest way with the demimonde ladies with whom, however, he never went farther, he charged very high fees and got them paid with the greatest punctuality.  Moreover, he would put himself out to visit them on the most trivial occasions, and Nana, who was always trembling at the fear of death, would send and fetch him two or three times a week and would anxiously confide to him little infantile ills which he would cure to an accompaniment of amusing gossip and harebrained anecdotes.  The ladies all adored him.  But this time the little ill was serious.

Muffat withdrew, deeply moved.  Seeing his poor Nana so very weak, his sole feeling was now one of tenderness.  As he was leaving the room she motioned him back and gave him her forehead to kiss.  In a low voice and with a playfully threatening look she said: 

“You know what I’ve allowed you to do.  Go back to your wife, or it’s all over and I shall grow angry!”

The Countess Sabine had been anxious that her daughter’s wedding contract should be signed on a Tuesday in order that the renovated house, where the paint was still scarcely dry, might be reopened with a grand entertainment.  Five hundred invitations had been issued to people in all kinds of sets.  On the morning of the great day the upholsterers were still nailing up hangings, and toward nine at night, just when the lusters were going to be lit, the architect, accompanied by the eager and interested countess, was given his final orders.