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-Léonard's increased.

Félicité reached the second floor. Already at the threshold, she
caught sight of Virginia lying on her back, with clasped hands,
her mouth open and her head thrown back, beneath a black crucifix
inclined toward her, and stiff curtains which were less white than
her face. Madame Aubain lay at the foot of the couch, clasping it
with her arms and uttering groans of agony. The Mother Superior
was standing on the right side of the bed. The three candles on
the bureau made red blurs, and the windows were dimmed by the fog
outside. The nuns carried Madame Aubain from the room.

For two nights, Félicité never left the corpse. She would repeat
the same prayers, sprinkle holy water over the sheets, get up,
come back to the bed and contemplate the body. At the end of the
first vigil, she noticed that the face had taken on a yellow