All that endless day she passed standing over hot stewpans and sealing up jars, in the torture known only to those whom the chances of life detain at a distance from the sick bed of those dear to them. She suffered such heart-rending agony as those unhappy creatures suffer who cannot go where their anxiety calls them, and who, in the extremity of despair caused by separation and uncertainty, constantly imagine that death will come in their absence. As she received no letter Thursday evening and none Friday morning, she took courage. If the little one were growing worse the nurse would have written her. The little one was better: she imagined her saved, cured. Children are forever coming near dying, and they get well so quickly! And then hers was strong. She decided to wait, to be patient until Sunday, which was only forty-eight hours away, deceiving the remainder of her fears with the superstitions that say yes to hope, persuading herself that her daughter had "escaped," because the first person she met in the morning was a man, because she had seen a red horse in the street, because she had guessed that a certain person would turn into a certain street, because she had ascended a flight of stairs in so many strides. On Saturday, in the morning, when she entered Mere Jupillon's shop, she found her weeping hot tears over a lump of butter that she was covering with a moist cloth. "Ah! it's you, is it?" said Mere Jupillon. "That poor charcoal woman! See, I'm actually crying over her! She just went away from here. You don't know--they can't get their faces clean in their trade with anything but butter. And here's her love of a daughter--she's at death's door, you know, the dear child. That's the way it is with us! Ah! _mon Dieu_, yes!--Well, as I was saying, she said to her just now like this: 'Mamma, I want you to wash my face in butter right away--for the good God.'" And Mere Jupillon began to sob. Germinie had fled. All that day she was unable to keep still. Again and again she went up to her chamber to prepare the few things she proposed to take to her little one the next day, to dress her cleanly, to make a little special toilet for her in honor of her recovery. As she went down in the evening to put Mademoiselle to bed, Adele handed her a letter that she had found for her below. XXIII