It was all she could do to open her jaws. Lazare brought the candle close to her, and was with difficulty able to espy the back of her throat, which was dry, and gleamed with a bright crimson. It was evidently a case of angina, and her burning fever and terrible headache filled him with alarm as to its precise nature. The poor girl's face wore such an agonised expression of choking that he was seized with a horrible fear of seeing her suffocated before his very eyes. She was not able to swallow; every attempt to do so made her whole body quiver. At last a fresh attack of coughing threw her into another fainting-fit; and thereupon in a state of complete panic he flew off to thump at Véronique's door. 'Véronique! Véronique! Get up! Pauline is dying.' When Véronique, half-dressed and scared, entered the girl's room, she found Lazare excitedly talking to himself in the middle of it. 'What a forsaken hole to be in! One might die here like a dog! There is no help to be had nearer than a couple of miles!' He strode up to Véronique. 'Try and get someone to go for the Doctor immediately,' he said. The servant stepped up to the bed and looked at the sick girl. She was quite alarmed at seeing her so flushed, and in her increasing affection for Pauline, whom she had at first so cordially detested, she felt a painful shock. 'I'll go myself,' she said quietly. 'That will be the quickest way. Madame will be quite able to light a fire downstairs, if you want one.' Then, scarcely yet fully awake, she put on her heavy boots and wrapped a shawl round her; and, after telling Madame Chanteau what the matter was as she went downstairs, she set off, striding along the muddy road. Two o'clock rang out from the church, and the night was so dark that she stumbled every now and then against heaps of stones. 'What is it, then?' asked Madame Chanteau, as she came upstairs. Lazare scarcely answered her. He had just been ferreting about in the cupboard for his old medical treatises, and was now bending down before the chest of drawers, turning over the pages of one of his books with trembling fingers, while trying to remember something of what he had formerly learnt. But he grew more and more confused, and perpetually turned to the index without being able to find what he wanted. 'It's only a bad sick headache,' said Madame Chanteau, who had sat down. 'The best thing we can do is to leave her to sleep.' At this Lazare burst out angrily: 'A sick headache! A sick headache indeed! You will drive me quite mad, mother, by standing there so unconcernedly. Go down stairs and get some water to boil.' 'There is no necessity to disturb Louise, is there?' she asked. 'No, indeed, not the least. I don't require anybody's assistance. If I want anything I will call you.'