On the wall-paper were bouquets of corn, cornflowers, and poppies, and the ceiling was painted with clouds, fresh-looking and vapoury. Between the door and window a carved wood praying-chair with a tapestry cushion looked quite at home in its corner; above it, against the light, was a holy-water vessel of brass-work, representing St. John baptizing Christ. In the opposite corner, hanging on the wall with silk cords, was a small bracket with some French books leaning against each other, and a few English works in cloth bindings. In front of the window, which was framed with creeping plants joining each other over the top and with the leaves that hung over bathed in light, was a dressing-table, covered with silk and guipure lace, with a blue velvet mirror and silver-mounted toilet bottles. The shaped mantel-shelf surmounted with a carved panel, had its glass framed with the same light shade of velvet as that on the dressing-table. On each side of the glass were miniatures of RenÉe's mother, one when quite young and wearing a string of pearls round her neck, and a daguerrotype representing her much older. Above this was a portrait of her father in his uniform, painted by herself, the frame of which, leaning forward, caused the picture to dominate the whole room. On a rosewood dinner-wagon, in front of the chimney-piece, were one or two knick-knacks, the sick girl's latest fancies—the little jug and the Saxony bowl that she had wanted. A little farther away, by the second window, all the souvenirs that RenÉe had collected in her riding days—her hunting and shooting relics, riding-canes, a Pyrenees whip, and some stags' feet with a card tied with blue ribbon, telling the day and place where the animal had been run to cover. Beyond the window was a little writing-desk which had been her father's at the military school, and on its shelf stood the boxes, baskets, and presents she had received as New Year's gifts. The bed was entirely draped with muslin. At the back of it, and as though under the shelter of its curtains, all the prayer-books RenÉe had had since her childhood were arranged on an Algerian bracket, from which some chaplets were hanging. Then came a chest of drawers covered with a hundred little nothings: doll's-house furniture, some glass ornaments, halfpenny jewellery, trifles won in lotteries, even little animals made of bread-crumbs cooked in the stove and with matches for legs, a regular museum of childish things, such as young girls hoard up and treasure as reminiscences. The room was bright and warm with the noonday sun. Near the bed was a little table arranged as an altar, covered with a white cloth. Two candles were burning and flickering in the golden daylight.

Through the dead silence, broken only by sobs, could be heard the heavy footsteps of a country priest going away. Then all was hushed, and the tears which were falling round the dying girl suddenly stopped as though by a miracle. In a few seconds all signs of disease and the anxious look of pain had disappeared from RenÉe's thin face, and in their place an ecstatic beauty, a look of supreme deliverance had come, at the sight of which her father, her mother, and her friend instinctively fell on their knees. A rapturous joy and peace had descended upon her. Her head sank gently back on the pillow as though she were in a dream. Her eyes, which were wide open and looking upward, seemed to be filled with the infinite, and her expression gradually took the fixity of eternal things. A holy aspiration seemed to rise from her whole face. All that remained of life—one last breath, trembled on her silent lips, which were half open and smiling. Her face had turned white. A silvery pallor lent a dull splendour to her delicate skin and shapely forehead. It was as though her whole face were looking upon another world than ours. Death was drawing near her in the form of a great light.

It was the transfiguration of those heart diseases which enshroud dying girls in all the beauty of their soul and then carry away to Heaven the young faces of their victims.