A long while afterward, she learned through Victor’s captain, the circumstances which surrounded his death.  At the hospital they had bled him too much, treating him for yellow fever.  Four doctors held him at one time.  He died almost instantly, and the chief surgeon had said: 

“Here goes another one!”

His parents had always treated him barbarously; she preferred not to see them again, and they made no advances, either from forgetfulness or out of innate hardness.

Virginia was growing weaker.

A cough, continual fever, oppressive breathing and spots on her cheeks indicated some serious trouble.  Monsieur Popart had advised a sojourn in Provence.  Madame Aubain decided that they would go, and she would have had her daughter come home at once, had it not been for the climate of Pont-l’Eveque.

She made an arrangement with a livery-stable man who drove her over to the convent every Tuesday.  In the garden there was a terrace, from which the view extends to the Seine.  Virginia walked in it, leaning on her mother’s arm and treading the dead vine leaves.  Sometimes the sun, shining through the clouds, made her blink her lids, when she gazed at the sails in the distance, and let her eyes roam over the horizon from the chateau of Tancarville to the lighthouses of Havre.  Then they rested on the arbour.  Her mother had bought a little cask of fine Malaga wine, and Virginia, laughing at the idea of becoming intoxicated, would drink a few drops of it, but never more.

Her strength returned.  Autumn passed.  Felicite began to reassure Madame Aubain.  But, one evening, when she returned home after an errand, she met M. Boupart’s coach in front of the door; M. Boupart himself was standing in the vestibule and Madame Aubain was tying the strings of her bonnet.  “Give me my foot-warmer, my purse and my gloves; and be quick about it,” she said.

Virginia had congestion of the lungs; perhaps it was desperate.

“Not yet,” said the physician, and both got into the carriage, while the snow fell in thick flakes.  It was almost night and very cold.

Felicite rushed to the church to light a candle.  Then she ran after the coach which she overtook after an hour’s chase, sprang up behind and held on to the straps.  But suddenly a thought crossed her mind:  “The yard had been left open; supposing that burglars got in!” And down she jumped.

The next morning, at daybreak, she called at the doctor’s.  He had been home, but had left again.  Then she waited at the inn, thinking that strangers might bring her a letter.  At last, at daylight she took the diligence for Lisieux.

The convent was at the end of a steep and narrow street.  When she arrived about at the middle of it, she heard strange noises, a funeral knell.  “It must be for some one else,” thought she; and she pulled the knocker violently.

After several minutes had elapsed, she heard footsteps, the door was half opened and a nun appeared.  The good sister, with an air of compunction, told her that “she had just passed away.”  And at the same time the tolling of Saint-Leonard’s increased.