Pauline then seemed to hesitate in her turn, and finally murmured: 'I'm afraid she mightn't be pleased if I did.' And so, after a moment of silent embarrassment, Lazare went upstairs by himself, without saying another word. When Lazare, for fear lest his father should be disquieted by his absence, appeared again at luncheon, he was very pale. From time to time during the day a ring of the bell summoned Véronique, who ran up with platefuls of soup, which the patient could scarcely be induced to taste; and when she came downstairs again she told Pauline that the poor young man was growing perfectly distracted. It was heart-breaking, she said, to see him shivering with fever by his mother's bedside, wringing his hands and with his face racked by grief, as though he every moment feared that he should see her torn from him. About three o'clock, as the servant came downstairs once more, she leant over the balustrade and called to Pauline; and as the girl reached the first-floor landing she said to her: 'You ought to go in, Mademoiselle, and help him a little. So much the worse if it displeases her. She wants Monsieur Lazare to turn her round, and he can only groan, without daring to touch her. And she won't let me go near her!' Pauline entered the room. Madame Chanteau lay back, propped up by three pillows, and, as far as mere appearances went, if it had not been for the quick, distressful breathing which set her shoulders heaving, she might have been keeping her bed from sheer idleness. Lazare stood before her, stammering: 'It's on your right side, then, that you want me to turn you?' 'Yes; just turn me a little. Ah! my poor boy, how difficult it seems to make you understand!' But Pauline had already taken hold gently of her aunt and turned her, saying: 'Let me do it! I am used to doing it for my uncle. There! Are you comfortable now?' But Madame Chanteau irritably exclaimed that they were shaking her to pieces. She seemed unable to make the slightest movement without being almost suffocated, and for a moment, indeed, she lay panting, with her face quite livid. Lazare had stepped behind the bed-curtains to conceal his expression of despair; still, he remained present while Pauline rubbed her aunt's legs with the tincture of digitalis. At first he turned his head aside, but some fascination ever made his eyes return to those swollen limbs, those inert masses of pale flesh, the sight of which made him almost choke with agony. When his cousin saw how utterly upset he was she thought it safer to send him out of the room. She went up to him, and, as Madame Chanteau dozed off, tired out by the mere changing of her position, she whispered to him softly: 'You would do better to go away.' For a moment or two he resisted; his tears blinded him, Then he yielded and went down, ashamed, and sobbing: 'Oh, God! God! I cannot endure it! I cannot endure it!'