Jeanne ran quickly towards the house, feeling as if a douche of cold water had been poured down her spine. There was quite a little crowd standing under the plane tree, which opened to let her through as she rushed forward. There, in the midst, lay the baroness on the ground, her head supported by two pillows, her face black, her eyes closed, and her chest, which for the last twenty years had heaved so tumultuously, motionless. The child's nurse was standing there; she took him from his mother's arms, and carried him away. "How did it happen? What made her fall?" asked Jeanne, looking up with haggard eyes. "Send for the doctor immediately." As she turned she saw the cure; he at once offered his services, and, turning up his sleeves, began to rub the baroness with Eau de Cologne and vinegar; but she showed no signs of returning consciousness. "She ought to be undressed and put to bed," said the priest; and, with his aid, Joseph Couillard, old Simon and Ludivine tried to raise the baroness. As they lifted her, her head fell backwards, and her dress, which they were grasping, gave way under the dead weight of her huge body. They were obliged to lay her down again, and Jeanne shrieked with horror. At last an armchair was brought from the drawing-room; the baroness was placed in it, carried slowly indoors, then upstairs, and laid on the bed. The cook was undressing her as best she could when the Widow Dentu came in, as if, like the priest, she had "smelt death," as the servants said. Joseph Couillard hurried off for the doctor, and the priest was going to fetch the holy oil, when the nurse whispered in his ear: "You needn't trouble to go, Monsieur le cure. I have seen too much of death not to know that she is gone." Jeanne, in desperation, begged them to tell her what she could do, what remedies they had better apply. The cure thought that anyhow he might pronounce an absolution, and for two hours they watched beside the lifeless, livid body, Jeanne, unable to contain her grief, sobbing aloud as she knelt beside the bed. When the door opened to admit the doctor, she thought that with him came safety and consolation and hope, and she rushed to meet him, trying to tell him, in a voice broken with sobs, all the details of the catastrophe. "She was walking--like she does every day--and she seemed quite well, better even--than usual. She had eaten some soup and two eggs for lunch, and--quite suddenly, without any warning she fell--and turned black, like she is now; she has not moved since, and we have--tried everything to restore her to consciousness--everything--" She stopped abruptly for she saw the nurse making a sign to the doctor to intimate that it was all over. Then she refused to understand the gesture, and went on anxiously: "Is it anything serious? Do you think there is any danger?" He answered at last: "I very much fear that--that life is extinct. Be brave and try to bear up."