“That you could not present yourself to Madame Dammauville in the character of a physician unless she sent for you.  I did not forget that; and it is not as a physician that I wish to beg you to accompany me, but as a friend, if you permit me to speak thus; as the most devoted, the most firm, and the most generous friend that we have had the happiness to encounter in our distress.”

“My daughter speaks in my name, as in her own,” Madame Cormier said with emotion; “I add that it is a respectful friendship, a profound gratitude, that we feel toward you.”

Although Phillis trembled to see the effect that she produced on Saniel, she continued with firmness: 

“You would accompany me, then, without doing anything ostensibly, without saying you are a doctor, and while she talks you could examine her.  Madame Dammauville gave her consent to my request with extreme kindness.  I shall return to her to-morrow, and if you think it useful, if you think you should accept the part that I claimed for you without consulting you, you can accompany me.”

He did not reply to these last words, which were an invitation as well as a question.

“Did you not examine her as I told you?” he asked, after a moment of reflection.

“With all the attention of which I was capable in my anguish.  Her glance seemed to me straight and untroubled; her voice is regular, very rhythmical; her words follow each other without hesitation; her ideas are consecutive and clearly expressed.  There is no trace of suffering on her pale face, which bears only the mark of a resigned grief.  She moves her arms freely, but the legs, so far as I could judge under the bedclothes, are motionless.  In many ways it seems to me that her paralysis resembles mamma’s, though it is true that in others it does not.  She must be extremely sensitive to the cold, for although the weather is not cold today, the temperature of her room seemed very high.”

“This is an examination,” Saniel said, “that a physician could not have conducted better, unless he questioned the patient; and had I been with you during this visit we should not have learned anything more.  It appears certain that Madame Dammauville is in possession of her faculties, which renders her testimony invulnerable.”

Madame Cormier drew her daughter to her and kissed her passionately.

“I have, therefore, nothing to do with this lady,” continued Saniel, with the precipitation of a man who has just escaped a danger.  “But your part, Mademoiselle, is not finished, and you must return to her tomorrow to fulfil that which Nougarde confides to you.”

He explained what Nougarde expected of her.

“Certainly,” she said.  “I will do all that I am advised to do for Florentin.  I will go to Madame Dammauville; I will go everywhere.  But will you permit me to express my astonishment that immediate profit is not made of this declaration to obtain the release of my brother?”