While Perico and Miranda kept off the blues in this way, Pilar’s remaining lung was gradually being consumed, as a plank is consumed with dry-rot. She did not grow worse because that was now impossible, and her existence, rather than life, was a lingering death, not very painful, disturbed only by an occasional fit of coughing which threatened to choke her. Life was in her like the flickering flame of a candle burned to the socket, which the slightest movement, the least breath of air will suffice to extinguish. She had lost her voice almost entirely, so that she could speak only in soft, low tones, such as a drum stuffed with cotton might emit. Fits of somnolence, frequent and protracted, would overpower her, periods of profound stupor, of utter exhaustion, which simulated and foreshadowed the final repose of the tomb. Her eyes closed, her body motionless, her feet side by side as if she already lay in her coffin, she would lie for hours and hours on the bed, giving no other sign of life than a faint, sibilant breathing. It was generally at the noonday hour that this comatose sleep took possession of her, and her nurse, who could do nothing for her but leave her to repose, and who was oppressed by the heavy atmosphere of the room, impregnated with the emanations from the medicines and the vapor of the perspiration--atoms of this human being in process of dissolution--would go out on the balcony, descend the stairs leading into the garden, and seating herself in the shade of the stunted plane tree, would pass there the hours of the _siesta_, sewing or crocheting. Her work consisted of diminutive shirts, bibs equally diminutive, petticoats neatly scalloped. In this sweet and secret occupation the hours passed by unnoticed, and occasionally the needle would slip from her skillful fingers and the silence, the solitude, the serenity of the heavens, the soft rustle of the sickly looking trees would tempt the industrious needlewoman into a pensive revery. The sun darted his golden arrows through the foliage across the sanded paths at this hour, and the air was dry and mild. The walls of the hotel and of Artegui’s house formed a sort of natural stove, attracting the solar heat and diffusing it through the garden. The railing which shut in the square bordered the Rue de Rivoli, and through its bars could be seen pass by, enveloped in the blue mists of evening, coaches, light victorias, landaus, whirled rapidly along by their costly teams, equestrians who at a distance looked like puppets, and workmen who looked like shadows cast from a Chinese lantern. In the distance gleamed at intervals the steel of a stirrup, the gay color of a gown or of a livery, the varnished spokes of a swiftly revolving wheel. Lucía’s attention was attracted by the many varieties of horses. There were Normandy horses with powerful haunches, strong necks and lustrous coats, deliberate in pace, that drew, with a movement at once powerful and gentle, the heavy vehicles to which they were harnessed; there were English horses with long necks, ungraceful, but stylish, that trotted with the precision of marvelous automatons; Arabian horses, with flashing eyes, quivering and dilated nostrils, shining hoofs, dry coats, and thin flanks; Spanish horses--although of these there were but few--with luxuriant manes, superb chests, broad loins, and forefeet that proudly pawed the air. As the sun sank lower in the west, the carriages could be distinguished in the distance by the scintillation of the lamps, but their forms and colors all blending together confusedly, Lucía’s eyes soon wearied of the effort of following them, and with renewed melancholy she fixed her gaze on the puny and consumptive-looking plants of the garden. At times her solitude was broken in upon, not by any traveler, either male or female--for visitors to Paris as a general thing do not spend the afternoon under a plane tree working--but by Sardiola, _in propria persona_, who, under pretext of watering the plants, plucking up a weed here and there, or rolling the sand of the path, held long conversations with his pensive compatriot. Certain it is that they were never in want of a subject on which to talk. Lucía’s eyes were no less tireless in asking questions than Sardiola’s tongue was eager to respond to them. Never were matters insignificant in themselves described with greater minuteness of detail. Lucía was now familiar with the eccentricities, the tastes and the ideas of Artegui, and knew by heart his traits of character, and the events of his life, which were in no wise remarkable.