"What do you mean?" cried poor Agathe.
"Her trey has turned up," he said, producing the list of numbers
written on a bit of paper, such as the officials of the lottery put by
hundreds into little wooden bowls on their counters.
Joseph read the list. Agathe read the list. The Descoings read
nothing; she was struck down as by a thunderbolt. At the change in her
face, at the cry she gave, old Desroches and Joseph carried her to her
bed. Agathe went for a doctor. The poor woman was seized with
apoplexy, and she only recovered consciousness at four in the
afternoon; old Haudry, her doctor, then said that, in spite of this
improvement, she ought to settle her worldly affairs and think of her
salvation. She herself only uttered two words:--
"Three millions!"
Old Desroches, informed by Joseph, with due reservations, of the state
of things, related many instances where lottery-players had seen a
fortune escape them on the very day when, by some fatality, they had
forgotten to pay their stakes; but he thoroughly understood that such
a blow might be fatal when it came after twenty years' perseverance.
About five o'clock, as a deep silence reigned in the little
_appartement_, and the sick woman, watched by Joseph and his mother, the
one sitting at the foot, the other at the head of her bed, was
expecting her grandson Bixiou, whom Desroches had gone to fetch, the
sound of Philippe's step and cane resounded on the staircase.
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