ever trusting in Providence, his childish mind continually swayed by
illusions, he did not notice the awful pecuniary embarrassment of the
household; but applied himself to the study of aerial navigation, without
even realising what prodigious activity his elder daughter, Blanche, was
forced to display, in order to earn the living of her two children, as
she was wont to call her father and her sister. It was Blanche who, by
running about Paris in the dust or the mud from morning to evening in
order to give French or music lessons, contrived to provide the money
necessary for the unremitting attentions which Marie required. And Marie
often experienced attacks of despair--bursting into tears and accusing
herself of being the primary cause of their ruin, as for years and years
now it had been necessary to pay for medical attendance and for taking
her to almost every imaginable spring--La Bourboule, Aix, Lamalou,
Amelie-les-Bains, and others. And the outcome of ten years of varied
diagnosis and treatment was that the doctors had now abandoned her. Some
thought her illness to be due to the rupture of certain ligaments, others
believed in the presence of a tumour, others again to paralysis due to
injury to the spinal cord, and as she, with maidenly revolt, refused to
undergo any examination, and they did not even dare to address precise
questions to her, they each contented themselves with their several
opinions and declared that she was beyond cure. Moreover, she now solely
relied upon the divine help, having grown rigidly pious since she had
been suffering, and finding her only relief in her ardent faith. Every
morning she herself read the holy offices, for to her great sorrow she
was unable to go to church. Her inert limbs indeed seemed quite lifeless,
and she had sunk into a condition of extreme weakness, to such a point,
in fact, that on certain days it became necessary for her sister to place
her food in her mouth.

Pierre was thinking of this when all at once he recalled an evening he