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The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Volume 1 by Émile Zola
page 82 of 141 (58%)

"And so you nearly missed the train, my child?" he said.

"I should have been much ashamed if I had, Monsieur l'Abbe," she replied.
"I had been at the station since twelve o'clock. And all at once I saw
his reverence, the priest of Sainte-Radegonde, who knows me well and who
called me to him, to kiss me and tell me that it was very good of me to
go back to Lourdes. But it seems the train was starting and I only just
had time to run on to the platform. Oh! I ran so fast!"

She paused, laughing, still slightly out of breath, but already repenting
that she had been so giddy.

"And what is your name, my child?" asked Pierre.

"Sophie Couteau, Monsieur l'Abbe."

"You do not belong to the town of Poitiers?"

"Oh no! certainly not. We belong to Vivonne, which is seven kilometres
away. My father and mother have a little land there, and things would not
be so bad if there were not eight children at home--I am the
fifth,--fortunately the four older ones are beginning to work."

"And you, my child, what do you do?"

"I, Monsieur l'Abbe! Oh! I am no great help. Since last year, when I came
home cured, I have not been left quiet a single day, for, as you can
understand, so many people have come to see me, and then too I have been
taken to Monseigneur's,* and to the convents and all manner of other
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