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And I have told them everywhere in the country. I illuminated Saint-Romans a month ago. Then they have made me tell a lie." The masseur had a great deal of trouble in explaining to her the parliamentary formalities of the verification of elections. She only listened with one ear, walking up and down the linen-room feverishly. "That's where my Bernard is now, then?" "Yes, madame."
Sister Hyacinthe, who had followed the ladies after leaving Sister Saint-Francois and Sister Claire des Anges in a small adjoining apartment which was being transformed into a linen-room, then began to lift up the coverlets and examine the bedding. And she promptly reassured Madame Desagneaux with regard to her surmises. "Oh! the beds are properly made," she said; "everything is very clean too.
"And, you can see, I've hardly recovered the use of my poor head yet. It's the journey which brings it on. It's the same thing every year." However, Berthaud and Gerard, who had just perceived the ladies, were hurrying up to them. That morning they had presented themselves at the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours, and Madame de Jonquiere had received them in a little office near the linen-room.
And then came a day when all the servants seemed suddenly to go mad a great rushing madness of mops and brooms and dusters and pails and everything in the house already perfectly clean was cleaned anew, and everything that was already polished was polished freshly, and when Dickie had been turned out of three rooms one after the other, had tumbled over a pail and had a dish-cloth pinned to his doublet by an angry cook, he sought out the nurse, very busy in the linen-room, and asked her what all the fuss was about.
That glass lighted a dark corridor adjoining the linen-room. Lydia employed several hours of several nights in cutting with a diamond a hole, the size of a fifty centime-piece, in one of those unpolished squares.
On opening the door of the linen-room, I saw the old seamstress lying on the ground by the side of her chair, with her face to the ground and her arms stretched out, but still holding her needle in one hand and one of my shirts in the other.
Then, on coming out, she tranquillized Valentine, who had gone to listen, trembling. "I've sobered her, I can tell you," said she. "Pay her her month's wages. She's packing her box and going off." Then, as they went back into the linen-room, Valentine settled pecuniary matters and added five francs for this new service. But a final difficulty arose.
Next day, while Madame Alphonse was working at her lace, I sewed and thought about the ploughman in the white smock. I could not in my mind help comparing him to Eugène. He spoke like Eugène did, and they seemed like one another somehow. That evening I thought I saw him near the stables, and a moment later he came into the linen-room.
As it happened, Sister Hyacinthe was just bringing Ferrand, whom Sister Saint-Francois had kept with her in a closet near the linen-room which he proposed to make his quarters. "Madame," said he to Madame de Jonquiere, "I am entirely at your disposal. In case of need you will only have to ring for me."
On the other side of the hall was the distributing-room in one corner, in the other a store-room, where, also, under my own lock and key, I kept the effects of dead soldiers, labelled and ready for identification by their friends. I was assisted in this work, in keeping the linen-room in order, and in various other ways, by a young German who had been detailed for that purpose.
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