Mother Bontemps confessed, received absolution and communion, and the priest took his departure, leaving the two women alone in the suffocating room, while La Rapet began to look at the dying woman, and to ask herself whether it could last much longer.

The day was on the wane, and gusts of cooler air began to blow, causing a view of Epinal, which was fastened to the wall by two pins, to flap up and down; the scanty window curtains, which had formerly been white, but were now yellow and covered with fly-specks, looked as if they were going to fly off, as if they were struggling to get away, like the old woman’s soul.

Lying motionless, with her eyes open, she seemed to await with indifference that death which was so near and which yet delayed its coming.  Her short breathing whistled in her constricted throat.  It would stop altogether soon, and there would be one woman less in the world; no one would regret her.

At nightfall Honore returned, and when he went up to the bed and saw that his mother was still alive, he asked:  “How is she?” just as he had done formerly when she had been ailing, and then he sent La Rapet away, saying to her:  “To-morrow morning at five o’clock, without fail.”  And she replied:  “To-morrow, at five o’clock.”

She came at daybreak, and found Honore eating his soup, which he had made himself before going to work, and the sick-nurse asked him:  “Well, is your mother dead?” “She is rather better, on the contrary,” he replied, with a sly look out of the corner of his eyes.  And he went out.

La Rapet, seized with anxiety, went up to the dying woman, who remained in the same state, lethargic and impassive, with her eyes open and her hands clutching the counterpane.  The nurse perceived that this might go on thus for two days, four days, eight days, and her avaricious mind was seized with fear, while she was furious at the sly fellow who had tricked her, and at the woman who would not die.

Nevertheless, she began to work, and waited, looking intently at the wrinkled face of Mother Bontemps.  When Honore returned to breakfast he seemed quite satisfied and even in a bantering humor.  He was decidedly getting in his wheat under very favorable circumstances.

La Rapet was becoming exasperated; every minute now seemed to her so much time and money stolen from her.  She felt a mad inclination to take this old woman, this, headstrong old fool, this obstinate old wretch, and to stop that short, rapid breath, which was robbing her of her time and money, by squeezing her throat a little.  But then she reflected on the danger of doing so, and other thoughts came into her head; so she went up to the bed and said:  “Have you ever seen the Devil?” Mother Bontemps murmured:  “No.”

Then the sick-nurse began to talk and to tell her tales which were likely to terrify the weak mind of the dying woman.  Some minutes before one dies the Devil appears, she said, to all who are in the death throes.  He has a broom in his hand, a saucepan on his head, and he utters loud cries.  When anybody sees him, all is over, and that person has only a few moments longer to live.  She then enumerated all those to whom the Devil had appeared that year:  Josephine Loisel, Eulalie Ratier, Sophie Padaknau, Seraphine Grospied.