Half an hour later Marianne, undressed and put into one of the dancing master's nightshirts, was lying in bed between white sheets and well protected from draughts by huge curtains of mustard-coloured rep. Barbe herself, having shed the fumes of alcohol along with her drenched blue satin, had bundled her hair up in a towel and dug up from somewhere a sort of grey overall, evidently the property of some manservant, and put it on over her wet petticoats.
In the ensuing hours Beyle was to thank heaven again and again for having put this extraordinary woman in his path. She was invaluable. In no time at all she had explored the Italian's house and discovered everything they most needed. She had a fire going in the dark, vaulted kitchen which was situated in the basement next door to the famous cellar, which also contained a variety of useful provisions such as tea, sugar, honey, flour, dried fruit, onions and preserves. Barbe went through it all and decreed that the first thing to be done for the invalid was to make her swallow a big cup of hot tea. Then, when Beyle's servants appeared at the kitchen door, she promptly got rid of them by the simple method of telling them outright that there was no room for them in such a small house and they must shift for themselves elsewhere. Only François, the driver, found favour in her eyes but the new abigail's would-be ingratiating smile was enough to send him hurrying off to join his fellows in their search for lodgings near by. He was, as it turned out, the only one of them to continue in Beyle's service, the others having found, in addition to new quarters, a more lucrative occupation in plundering the Great Bazaar.
There was, of course, equally no place for Bonnaire in the establishment. He, in any case, was anxious to seek treatment on his own account and directed his steps hopefully towards the main hospital of the city. Beyle, meanwhile, made himself as comfortable as he could in the single living-room of the house.
But when he came to tap on the door of the room in which Barbe had for some moments past been closeted with Marianne, the sight that met his eyes had him rooted to the spot. The Polish woman was sitting on the bed with Marianne's head resting on her bosom. She had the girl's mouth open and was examining her throat by the light of a candle. Beyle sprang forward.
'Here! What do you think you're doing?'
'Trying to discover the cause of her fever. There's such a redness down there, you'd think she was on fire.'
'Well? And what do you propose to do?'
Barbe, quite unmoved by his tone, set the candle on the bedside table, laid Marianne back on her pillows, and came towards him.
'All that may be necessary,' she said simply. 'You must know, I've seen a fair bit of fighting since I've been following the army, and nursed more than one man. I've learned things. More than that, before I – came down in the world I used to be waiting woman to Princess Lubomirska and my father, God rest his soul, was apothecary on the Janowiec estate. I know what I'm about. I've seen fevers of this kind before in plenty. So just you go and rest yourself and leave me be. I daresay that great gaby of a man of yours can knock you up something to eat.'
With her flaxen hair ruthlessly swept up into the towel, large, bulbous violet eyes and face not altogether unattractive, despite the massive forehead, too broad for a woman, Barbe was, in her way, a formidable figure. Her references, moreover, seemed to be excellent so that Beyle succumbed and let her have her way. He was not feeling particularly well himself and so retired without further argument, merely asking the nurse if she would be good enough to save a little tea for him if, as she had announced, she was going to make some for Marianne.
'I am feeling a trifle liverish,' he confided, with some idea of enlisting her sympathies on his own account, 'and I'm sure it would do me good.'
'It won't do you any harm, certainly, as long as you don't fill it up with cream.' Barbe gave a sigh. 'Well, well, it seems to me it was high time you found me. You're neither of you what one might call blooming. By the way, what's your name?'
'I am Monsieur de Beyle, auditor to the Council of State,' he told her, with his usual emphasis on what, in his opinion, was his impressive position.
However, it did not appear to satisfy Barbe.
'Yes, but what are you? Count, marquis, baron or what?' she asked, reeling off the list ingratiatingly.
Beyle flushed to the roots of his black hair.
'None of them,' he said, nettled. 'Although my position is at least equivalent to a title.'
'Oh,' said the Polish woman. She said no more but the shrug with which she shut the bedroom door upon him indicated the measure of her disappointment.
Disappointed or not, Barbe the prostitute worked like a trojan that night, shut up alone with Marianne. She fought the fever with every means in her power, making the invalid swallow cup after cup of weak tea with plenty of honey in it and a greyish powder, a supply of which she seemed to carry in a metal box in a pocket in one of her petticoats, along with her other valuables – just then consisting of a string of pearls and a few rings acquired from an abandoned house. She even went so far as to bleed Marianne, with the aid of a carefully sharpened kitchen knife, an operation that would have made Beyle shudder if he could have seen it but which she performed with a skill and confidence that any experienced apothecary might have envied.
She laboured to such good effect that by midnight or thereabouts Marianne was sleeping at last, a sleep that was no longer the unconsciousness of delirium. Her kindly physician then settled down in a large elbow chair with plenty of cushions to refresh herself with the remainder of the tea heavily laced with an old Armagnac she had found in the dancing master's cupboard, where he kept his scores and a few Italian books.
It was broad daylight when Marianne struggled slowly back to consciousness again. Finding herself lying in a strange bed, in a strange room, with a strange woman sitting beside her she thought at first that she was still dreaming.
But the room smelled of cold tea, brandy and the smoke which was still creeping in through the drawn curtains. Moreover the grey shape with the human face that lay huddled in the armchair was snoring too loudly to belong to the world of dreams. All this, and the aches and pains in her own body, convinced Marianne that she was wide awake.
She had, besides, a horrid feeling of being stuck to the bed. She must have perspired a great deal when the fever broke because the sheets and the nightshirt she was wearing were soaked with sweat.
She hoisted herself painfully into a sitting position. Even this simple action was enough to tell her that, while her body was wretchedly weak, her mind at least was quite clear again. With that, she began trying to put her thoughts in order and to work out how she came to be in this room, the details of which she could not make out clearly because the drawn curtains left it still in semi-darkness.
Memory returned swiftly enough: her flight through the blazing city, the fight with the drunken harpy in the boulevard, Beyle's carriage and the little wood beside the lake, then her stupid, irrational urge to follow the road to the sea, the way it had seemed to call her, and the child who had run into her arms and calmed that urge. After that, everything was very misty and she could not remember, only she had an impression that she had travelled a long way, tumbling into huge chasms peopled with evil shapes and grinning faces.
Her mouth felt dry and she saw a glass half-filled with water on the table by her bed. She reached out her hand to get it but there seemed to be no strength in her. She would never have believed a glass of water could be so heavy. It slipped out of her clumsy fingers and fell and broke on the floor.