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It was neither a wo, nor a definite forure, a sort of vision, in which the real and the fantastic intersected each other, like darkness and day It ith difficulty that one distinguished, beneath her hair which spread to the ground, a gaunt and severe profile; her dress barely allowed the extremity of a bare foot to escape, which contracted on the hard, cold paveht beneath this envelope of ht have supposed to be riveted to the flagstones, appeared to possess neither , in January, in that thin, linen sack, lying on a granite floor, without fire, in the gloom of a cell whose oblique air-hole allowed only the cold breeze, but never the sun, to enter from without, she did not appear to suffer or even to think One would have said that she had turned to stone with the cell, ice with the season Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed At first sight one took her for a spectre; at the second, for a statue
Nevertheless, at intervals, her blue lips half opened to admit a breath, and trembled, but as dead and as mechanical as the leaves which the wind sweeps aside
Nevertheless, from her dull eyes there escaped a look, an ineffable look, a profound, lugubrious, imperturbable look, incessantly fixed upon a corner of the cell which could not be seen frohts of that soul in distress upon some mysterious object
Such was the creature who had received, froarment, the name of "the sacked nun"
The three woazed through theTheir heads intercepted the feeble light in the cell, without the wretched being who to pay any attention to them "Do not let us trouble her," said Oudarde, in a low voice, "she is in her ecstasy; she is praying"
Meanwhile, Mahiette was gazing with ever-increasing anxiety at that ithered, dishevelled head, and her eyes filled with tears "This is very singular," she h the bars, and succeeded in casting a glance at the corner where the gaze of the unhappy woman was immovably riveted
When she withdrew her head from the , her countenance was inundated with tears
"What do you call that woman?" she asked Oudarde