The blockade was carefully prepared, as if they were besieging a fortress.  Each agreed to play the part assigned to him or her, the arguments to be used, the maneuvers to be executed.  They decided on the plan of attack, the stratagems and the surprise assault to be attempted in order to compel this living citadel to receive the enemy.

Cornudet, however, remained apart, completely unwilling to participate in this plot.

The minds were so tensely absorbed in this scheme that nobody heard Boule de Suif coming in.  But the Count whispered a gentle:  “Hush!” which caused all eyes to look up.  There she stood.  There was a sudden silence and a certain embarrassment prevented them first from speaking to her.  The Countess having more than the others the habit of drawing-room duplicities, questioned her:—­“Was the baptism interesting?—­”

The girl, still laboring under her emotion, told everything, described the faces, the attitudes, and even the appearance of the Church.  She added:—­“It does one so much good to pray sometimes!—­”

However, until lunch time the ladies confined themselves to being nice to her with a view to make her feel more confident and amenable to their advances.

As soon as they sat down to luncheon, the preliminary attack was initiated.  It was at first a vague discussion about self-sacrifice.  They quoted instances from ancient History, such as Judith and Holophern, then, without any reason Lucretia with Sextus, Cleopatra who admitted to her intimacy all the enemy generals and reduced them to slavish servility.  Then a fancy History was propounded, originating in the imagination of those ignorant millionaires, and according to which Roman matrons used to go to Capua and lull Hannibal in their arms, and with him, his lieutenants and the phalanxes of his mercenaries.  They quoted all the women who had stopped conquerors, converted their bodies into battlefields, a means of conquest, a weapon, who by their heroic caresses had vanquished frightful and execrated beings, and had sacrificed their chastity to vengeance and patriotic devotion.

They even spoke, in veiled terms, of that English lady of noble family, who had allowed herself to be inoculated with a horrid and contagious disease, which she wanted to communicate to Bonaparte, and how the latter had been miraculously saved by a sudden faintness during the fatal appointment.

And all this was told without overstepping the bounds of propriety and moderation, with her and there a studied manifestation of enthusiasm intended to provoke emulation.

In the end one would have been led to believe that the only mission of woman on this earth was a perpetual sacrifice of her person, a continual offering of herself to the caprices of enemy soldiers.

The two nuns did not seem to hear this conversation, lost as they were in their own deep thoughts.  Boule de Suif was silent.