Everybody can therefore imagine the joy felt by this poor woman, shut up in an almshouse, on hearing of one of those actions which, though rare, still are heard of in France. After his failure Frangois Joseph Collinet, the head of the house of Collinet, sailed for America with his children. He was a man of too much good feeling to sit down at Nantes, ruined and bereft of credit, in the midst of the disasters caused by his bankruptcy. From 1814 till 1824 this brave merchant, helped by his children and by his cashier, who remained faithful to him, and lent him the money to start again, valiantly worked to make a second fortune. After incredible efforts, that were crowned by success, by the eleventh year he was able to return to Nantes and rehabilitate himself, leaving his eldest son at the head of the American house. He found Madame Lorrain of Pen-Hoël at Saint-Jacques, and beheld the resignation with which the most hapless of his fellow-victims endured her penury.
“God forgive you!” said the old woman, “since you give me on the brink of the grave the means of securing my grandchild’s happiness. I, alas! can never see my poor old man’s credit reestablished.”
Monsieur Collinet had brought to his creditor her capital and interest at trade rates, altogether about forty-two thousand francs. His other creditors, active, wealthy, and capable men, had kept themselves above water, while the Lorrains’ overthrow had seemed to old Collinet irremediable; he had now promised the widow that he would rehabilitate her husband’s good name, finding that it would involve an expenditure of only about forty thousand francs more. When this act of generous restitution became known on ’Change at Nantes, the authorities were eager to reopen its doors to Collinet before he had surrendered to the Court at Rennes; but the merchant declined the honor, and submitted to all the rigor of the Commercial Code.
Madame Lorrain, then, had received forty-two thousand francs the day before the post brought her Brigaut’s letters. As she signed her receipt, her first words were:
“Now I can live with my Pierrette, and let her marry poor Brigaut, who will make a fortune out of my money!”
She could not sit still; she fussed and fidgeted, and wanted to set out for Provins. And when she had read the fatal letters, she rushed out into the town like a mad thing, asking how she could get to Provins with the swiftness of lightning. She set out by mail when she heard of the Governmental rapidity of that conveyance. From Paris she took the Troyes coach; she had arrived at eleven that evening at Frappier’s, where Brigaut, seeing the old Bretonne’s deep despair, at once promised to fetch her granddaughter, after describing Pierrette’s state in a few words. Those few words so alarmed the old woman that she could not control her impatience; she ran out to the Square. When Pierrette screamed, her grandmothers heart was pierced by the cry as keenly as was Brigaut’s. The two together would no doubt have roused all the inhabitants, if Rogron, in sheer terror, had not opened the door. This cry of a girl in extremity filled the old woman with strength as great as her horror; she carried her dear Pierrette all the way to Frappier’s, where his wife had hastily arranged Brigaut’s room for Pierrette’s grandmother. So in this miserable lodging, on a bed scarcely made, they laid the poor child; she fainted away, still keeping her hand closed, bruised and bleeding as it was, her nails set in the flesh. Brigaut, Frappier, his wife, and the woman contemplated Pierrette in silence, all lost in unutterable astonishment.
“Why is her hand covered with blood?” was the grandmother’s first question.
Pierrette, overcome by the sleep which follows such an extreme exertion of strength, and knowing that she was safe from any violence, relaxed her fingers. Brigaut’s letter fell out as an answer.
“They wanted to get my letter,” said Brigaut, falling on his knees and picking up the note he had written, desiring his little friend to steal softly out of the Rogrons’ house. He piously kissed the little martyr’s hand.
Then there was a thing which made the joiners shudder: it was the sight of old Madame Lorrain, a sublime spectre, standing by her child’s bedside. Horror and vengeance fired with fierce expression the myriad wrinkles that furrowed her skin of ivory yellow; on her brow, shaded by thin gray locks, sat divine wrath. With the powerful intuition granted to the aged as they approach the tomb, she read all Pierrette’s life, of which indeed she had been thinking all the way she had come.
She understood the malady that threatened the life of her darling. Two large tears gathered painfully in her gray-and-white eyes, which sorrow had robbed of lashes and eyebrows; two beads of grief that gave a fearful moisture to those eyes, and swelled and rolled over those withered cheeks without wetting them.
“They have killed her!” she said at last, clasping her hands.
She dropped on her knees, which hit two sharp blows on the floor; she was making a vow, no doubt, to Sainte-Anne d’Auray, the most powerful Madonna of Brittany.
“A doctor from Paris,” she next said to Brigaut. “Fly there, Brigaut. Go!”
She took the artisan by the shoulders and turned him round with a despotic gesture.
“I was coming at any rate, my good Brigaut,” she said, calling him back. “I am rich.—Here!” She untied the ribbon that fastened her bodice across her bosom, took out a paper, in which were wrapped forty-two banknotes, and said, “Take as much as you need;
