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The lumbering vehicle started on its way, and the journey began afresh. At first no one spoke. Boule de Suif dared not even raise her eyes. She felt at once indignant with her neighbors, and humiliated at having yielded to the Prussian into whose arms they had so hypocritically cast her.
The basket was empty this had not been difficult among ten of them they only regretted it was not larger. The conversation was kept up for some little time longer, although somewhat more coldly after they had finished eating. The night fell, the darkness grew gradually more profound, and the cold, to which digestion rendered them more sensitive, made even Boule de Suif shiver in spite of her fat.
Boule de Suif said nothing and rejoined the rest of the party. When they returned, she went straight to her room and did not come down again. The anxiety was terrible. What was she going to do? How unspeakably mortifying if she still persisted in her refusal! The dinner-hour arrived, they waited for her in vain.
However, to prevent a recurrence of the fainting, the Nun obliged her to drink a full cup of claret, and she added: "It is just hunger, and nothing else." Then Boule de Suif, blushing and embarrassed, stammered, looking at the four passengers who had not yet broken their fast: "Mon Dieu!, if I ventured to offer these ladies and gentlemen?" She stopped short, thinking she had hurt their feelings.
But a side-door opened, and when, after a few minutes, she came back, Cornudet, in his shirt-sleeves and suspenders, was following her. Boule de Suif seemed to deny him energetically admission to her room. Unfortunately Loisseau could not hear what they said, but in the end, as they raised their voices, he was able to catch a few words.
Suddenly, in a flight of spontaneous perfection, he wrote Boule de Suif. His master's joy was great and overwhelming. He died two months later. Until the end Maupassant remained illuminated by the reflection of the good, vanished giant, by that touching reflection that comes from the dead to those souls they have so profoundly stirred.
The Count shuffled the cards, dealt, Boule de Suif had "trente et un" at the first deal; and very soon the interest in the game allayed the fears which beset their minds. Cornudet, however, observed that the two Loiseaus were in league to cheat.
The two Sisters appeared to be deaf to it all, sunk in profound thought. Boule de Suif said nothing.
"Good-day, sir," he said to the officer as he put his foot to the ground, acting on an impulse born of prudence rather than of politeness. The other, insolent like all in authority, merely stared without replying. Boule de Suif and Cornudet, though near the door, were the last to alight, grave and dignified before the enemy.
He then took up the parable in a didactic tone with the phraseology culled from the notices posted each day on the walls, and finished up with a flourish of eloquence in which he scathingly alluded to "that blackguard of a Badinguet." But Boule de Suif fired up at this for she was a Bonapartist. She turned upon him with scarlet cheeks and stammering with indignation, "Ah!
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