‘Well?’ he said.

She answered:

‘Oh, my poor sir, there’s no change. I feel almost done for. It’s no better.’

The doctor declared that they would have to wait, a complication might supervene.

He waited three days, then he came back. The old woman, her skin clear, her eyes limpid, began to groan as soon as she saw him.

‘I can’t move any more, my poor sir, I can’t. I’ll be like this till the end of my days.’

A shudder ran up Hector’s bones. He asked the doctor. The doctor raised his hands:

‘What can I say, sir? I do not know. She howls when we try to raise her. We can’t even change the position of her chair, without her uttering heart-rending cries. I have to believe what she tells me, sir: I am not inside her. So long as I have not seen her walk, I have no right to suppose it’s a lie on her part.

The old woman listened, motionless, her eyes cunning.

A week passed: then two weeks, then a month. Madame Simon did not leave her chair. She ate from morning to night, grew fat, talked gaily with the other patients, seemed accustomed to immobility as if it had been the well-earned repose, won by her fifty years of stairs climbed, of mattresses turned, of coal carried from floor to floor, of sweepings and brushings.

Hector, aghast, came every day: every day he found her tranquil and serene, and declaring:

‘I can’t move, my poor sir, I can’t.’

Every evening Madame de Gribelin asked, devoured by distress:

‘And Madame Simon?’

And every time he answered with a despairing despondency:

‘No change, absolutely none!’

They sent away the servant, whose wages became too great a burden. They economized still more: the whole extra fee was spent.

Then Hector called in four eminent doctors, who met around the old woman. She let them examine her, touch her, feel her, watching them with a shrewd eye.

‘She must be made to walk,’ said one.

She cried out:

‘I can’t, my good sirs, I can’t.’

Then they seized hold of her, lifted her up, dragged her a few steps: but she slid out of their hands, and collapsed on the floor, emitting such fearful shouts that they put her back on her chair with infinite precautions.

They gave a discreet opinion, concluding all the same that it was impossible that she could go on working.

And when Hector took this news to his wife, she let herself fall on a chair, stammering: