Her skin, white with the whiteness of unglazed porcelain, her forehead, where suffering had printed the semblance of deep thought, the purity of the lines refined by illness, the slowness of the glances, and the occasional fixity of the eyes, made Pierrette an almost perfect embodiment of melancholy.  She was served by all with a sort of fanaticism; she was felt to be so gentle, so tender, so loving.  Madame Martener sent her piano to her sister Madame Auffray, thinking to amuse Pierrette who was passionately fond of music.  It was a poem to watch her listening to a theme of Weber, or Beethoven, or Herold,—­her eyes raised, her lips silent, regretting no doubt the life escaping her.  The cure Peroux and Monsieur Habert, her two religious comforters, admired her saintly resignation.  Surely the seraphic perfection of young girls and young men marked with the hectic of death, is a wonderful fact worthy of the attention alike of philosophers and of heedless minds.  He who has ever seen one of these sublime departures from this life can never remain, or become, an unbeliever.  Such beings exhale, as it were, a celestial fragrance; their glances speak of God; the voices are eloquent in the simplest words; often they ring like some seraphic instrument revealing the secrets of the future.  When Monsieur Martener praised her for having faithfully followed a harsh prescription the little angel replied, and with what a glance!—­

“I want to live, dear Monsieur Martener; but less for myself than for my grandmother, for my Brigaut, for all of you who will grieve at my death.”

The first time she went into the garden on a beautiful sunny day in November attended by all the household, Madame Auffray asked her if she was tired.

“No, now that I have no sufferings but those God sends I can bear all,” she said.  “The joy of being loved gives me strength to suffer.”

That was the only time (and then vaguely) that she ever alluded to her horrible martyrdom at the Rogrons, whom she never mentioned, and of whom no one reminded her, knowing well how painful the memory must be.

“Dear Madame Auffray,” she said one day at noon on the terrace, as she gazed at the valley, warmed by a glorious sun and colored with the glowing tints of autumn, “my death in your house gives me more happiness than I have had since I left Brittany.”

Madame Auffray whispered in her sister Martener’s ear:—­

“How she would have loved!”

In truth, her tones, her looks gave to her words a priceless value.

Monsieur Martener corresponded with Doctor Bianchon, and did nothing of importance without his advice.  He hoped in the first place to regular the functions of nature and to draw away the abscess in the head through the ear.  The more Pierrette suffered, the more he hoped.  He gained some slight success at times, and that was a great triumph.  For several days Pierrette’s appetite returned and enabled