“Keep that,” said Frappier; “he could not change a banknote at this hour. I have money; the diligence will pass presently, he will be sure to find a place in it. But would it not be better first to consult Monsieur Martener, who will give us the name of a Paris physician? The diligence is not due for an hour; we have plenty of time.”
Brigaut went off to rouse Monsieur Martener. He brought the doctor back with him, not a little surprised to find Mademoiselle Lorrain at Frappieris. Brigaut described to him the scene that had just taken place at the Rogrons’. The loquacity of a despairing lover threw light on this domestic drama, though the doctor could not suspect its horrors or its extent. Martener gave Brigaut the address of the famous Horace Bianchon, and Jacques and his master left the room on hearing the approach of the diligence.
Monsieur Martener sat down, and began by examining the bruises and wounds on the girl’s hand, which hung out of bed.
“She did not hurt herself in such a way,” said he.
“No, the dreadful creature I was so unhappy as to trust her with was torturing her,” said the grandmother. “My poor Pierrette was crying out, ‘Help! Murder!’ It was enough to touch the heart of an executioner.”
“But why?” said the doctor, feeling Pierrette’s pulse. “She is very ill,” he went on, bringing the light close to the bed. “We shall hardly save her,” said he, after looking at her face. “She must have suffered terribly, and I cannot understand their having left her without care.”
“It is my intention,” said the old woman, “to appeal to Justice. Had these people, who wrote to ask me for my granddaughter, saying that they had twelve thousand francs a year, any right to make her their cook and give her work far beyond her strength?”
“They did not choose to see that she was obviously suffering from one of the ailments to which young girls are sometimes subject, and needed the greatest care!” cried Monsieur Martener.
Pierrette was roused, partly by the light held by Madame Frappier so as to show her face more clearly, and partly by the dreadful pain in her head, caused by reactionary collapse after her struggle.
“Oh, Monsieur Martener, I am very ill,” said she, in her pretty voice.
“Where is the pain, my child?” said the doctor.
“There,” she replied, pointing to a spot on her head above the left ear.
“There is an abscess!” cried the doctor, after feeling Pierrette’s head for some time, and questioning her as to the pain. “You must tell us everything, my dear, to enable us to cure you. Why is your hand in this state? You did not injure it like this yourself?”
Pierrette artlessly told the tale of her struggle with her cousin Sylvie.
“Make her talk to you,” said the doctor to her grandmother, “and learn all about it. I will wait till the surgeon arrives from Paris, and we will call in the head surgeon of the hospital for a consultation. It seems to me very serious. I will send a soothing draught to give Mademoiselle some sleep. She needs rest.”
The old Bretonne, left alone with her grandchild, made her tell everything, by exerting her influence over her, and explaining to her that she was rich enough for all three, so that Brigaut need never leave them. The poor child confessed all her sufferings, never dreaming of the lawsuit she was leading up to. The monstrous conduct of these two loveless beings, who knew nothing of family affection, revealed to the old woman worlds of torment, as far from her conception as the manners of the savage tribes must have been to the first travelers who penetrated the savannas of America.
Her grandmother’s presence, and the certainty of living with her for the future in perfect ease, lulled Pierrette’s mind as the draught lulled her body. The old woman watched by her, kissing her brow, hair, and hands, as the holy women may have kissed Jesus while laying Him in the sepulchre.
By nine in the morning Monsieur Martener went to the President of the Courts, and related to him the scene of the past night between Sylvie and Pierrette, the moral and physical torture, the cruelty of every kind inflicted by the Rogrons on their ward, and the two fatal maladies which had been developed by this ill-usage. The President sent for the notary, Monsieur Auffray, a connection of Pierrette’s on her mother’s side.
At this moment the war between the Vinet party and the Tiphaine party was at its height. The gossip circulated in Provins by the Rogrons and their adherents as to the well-known liaison between Madame Roguin and du Tillet the banker, and the circumstances of Monsieur Roguin’s bankruptcy—Madame Tiphaine’s father was said to have committed forgery—hit all the more surely because, though it was scandal, it was not calumny. Such wounds pierce to the bottom of things; they attacked self-interest in its most vital part. These statements, repeated to the partisans of Tiphaine by the same speakers who also reported to the Rogrons all the sarcasms uttered by the “beautiful Madame Tiphaine” and her friends, added fuel to their hatred, complicated as it was with political feeling.
The irritation caused in France at that time by party spirit, which had waxed excessively violent, was everywhere bound up, as it was at Provins, with imperiled interests and offended with antagonistic private feelings. Each coterie eagerly pounced on anything that might damage its rival. Party animosity was not less implicated than personal conceit in even trivial questions, which were often carried to great lengths. A whole town threw itself in some dispute, raising it to the dignity of a political contest. And so the President discerned, in the action between Pierrette and the Rogrons, a means of confuting, discrediting, and humiliating the owners of that drawing-room where plots were hatched against the monarchy, and where the Opposition newspaper had had its birth.
He
