"Have confidence," said Pierre; "the Blessed Virgin is watching over
you."

She could no longer remain seated, and it became necessary to replace her
in a recumbent position in her narrow coffin. Her father and the priest
had to take every precaution in doing so, for the slightest hurt drew a
moan from her. And she lay there breathless, like one dead, her face
contracted by suffering, and surrounded by her regal fair hair. They had
now been rolling on, ever rolling on for nearly four hours. And if the
carriage was so greatly shaken, with an unbearable spreading tendency, it
was from its position at the rear part of the train. The coupling irons
shrieked, the wheels growled furiously; and as it was necessary to leave
the windows partially open, the dust came in, acrid and burning; but it
was especially the heat which grew terrible, a devouring, stormy heat
falling from a tawny sky which large hanging clouds had slowly covered.
The hot carriages, those rolling boxes where the pilgrims ate and drank,
where the sick lay in a vitiated atmosphere, amid dizzying moans,
prayers, and hymns, became like so many furnaces.

And Marie was not the only one whose condition had been aggravated;
others also were suffering from the journey. Resting in the lap of her
despairing mother, who gazed at her with large, tear-blurred eyes, little
Rose had ceased to stir, and had grown so pale that Madame Maze had twice
leant forward to feel her hands, fearful lest she should find them cold.
At each moment also Madame Sabathier had to move her husband's legs, for
their weight was so great, said he, that it seemed as if his hips were
being torn from him. Brother Isidore too had just begun to cry out,
emerging from his wonted torpor; and his sister had only been able to
assuage his sufferings by raising him, and clasping him in her arms. La