VI.
Miraculous cures were counted by hundreds. It was impossible to verify them all. The episcopal commission submitted thirty of them to most rigorous scrutiny. The most severe strictness was shown in this examination, and nothing was admitted as supernatural, until it was absolutely impossible to call it anything else. All cures which had not been almost instantaneous, or which had been occupied by successive stages, all these were rejected; as also were all which had been obtained in conjunction with medical treatment, however unavailing the latter might have been. "Although the inefficacy of the remedies prescribed by science has been sufficiently demonstrated, we cannot in this case in an exclusive manner attribute the cure to a supernatural virtue in the water of the grotto which was used at the same time." So runs the report of the secretary of the commission.
Moreover, numerous spiritual favors, singular graces, unlooked-for conversions, had been reported to the commission. It is difficult to establish juridically events which have taken place in the closed recesses of the human soul and which escape the observation of all without. Although such facts, such changes, are often more wonderful than the restoration of a member or the healing of a physical disease, the commission judged rightly when it decided that it ought not to include them in the solemn and public inquiry with which it had been charged by the bishop.
In the report to his grace, the committee, by agreement with the physicians, divided the cures which had been examined into three categories, with all the carefully gathered details and procès-verbaux, signed by the persons cured and by numerous witnesses.
The first category included those cures which, despite their striking and astonishing appearance, were susceptible of a natural explanation. These were six in number; namely, those of Jeanne-Marie Arqué, the widow Crozat, Blaise Maumus, a child of the Lasbareilles of Gez, Jeanne Crassus, Arcizan-Avant, Jeanne Pomiès of Loubajac.
The second list comprised cures which the commission felt inclined to attribute a supernatural character. Of this number were Jean-Pierre Malou, Jeanne-Marie Dauber, wife of a certain Vendôme, Bernarde Soubies and Pauline Bordeaux of Lourdes, Jean-Marie Amaré of Beaucens, Marcelle Peyregue of Agos, Jeanne-Marie Massot Bordenave of Arras, Jeanne Gezma and Auguste Bordes of Pontacq. "The greater number of these facts," says the medical report, "possess all the conditions to cause them be admitted as supernatural. It will, perhaps, be found that in excluding them we have acted with too much reserve and scrupulousness.
"But far from complaining of this reproach, we shall congratulate ourselves upon it, since in these matters we are convinced that prudence demands severity."
Under such circumstances, a natural explanation, although in itself utterly improbable, seemed rigorously possible, and this was sufficient to prevent the examiners from declaring a miracle.
The third class contained cures which presented an undeniable and evident supernatural character, fifteen in number. Those of: Blaisette Soupenne, Benoite Cazeaux, Jeanne Grassus married to Crozat, Louis Bourriette, little Justin Bouhohorts, Fabian and Suzanne Baron of Lourdes, Madame Rizanand, Henry Busquet of Nay, Catherine Latapie of Loubajac, Madame Lanou of Bordères, Marianne Garrot and Denys Bouchet of Lamarque, Jean-Marie Tambourné of St. Justin, Mlle. Marie Moreau de Sazenay of Tartas, Paschaline Abbadie of Rabasteins, all these were incontestably miraculous.
"The maladies to which those favored by such sudden and startling cures were subject were of entirely different natures"—we quote from the report of the commission. "They possessed the greatest variety of character. Some were the subjects of external, others of internal pathology. Nevertheless, these various diseases were all cured by a single simple element, used either as a lotion or drink, or sometimes in both ways.
"In the natural and scientific order, furthermore, each remedy is used in a fixed and regular manner; it has its special virtue proper to a given malady, but is either inefficacious or hurtful in other cases.
"It is not, then, by any property inherent in its composition that the Massabielle water has been able to produce such numerous, diverse, and extraordinary cures, and to extinguish at once diseases of different and opposite characters. Furthermore, science has authoritatively declared, after analysis, that this water has no mineral or therapeutic qualities, and chemically does not differ from other pure waters. Medical science, having been consulted, after mature and conscientious examination, is not less decisive in its conclusions."
"In glancing at the general appearance of these cures," says the medical report, "one cannot fail to be struck by the ease, the promptitude, and instantaneous rapidity with which they spring from their producing cause; from the violation and overthrow of all therapeutic laws and methods which takes place in their accomplishment; from the contradictions offered by them to all the accepted axioms and cautions of science; from that kind of disdain which sports with the chronic nature and long resistance of the disease; from the concealed but real care with which all the circumstances are arranged and combined: everything, in short, shows that the cures wrought belong to an order apart from the habitual course of nature.
"Such phenomena surpass the limits of the human intellect. How, indeed, can it comprehend the opposition which exists:
"Between the simplicity of the means and the greatness of the result?
"Between the unity of the remedy and the variety of the diseases?
"Between the short time employed in the use of this remedy and the lengthy treatment indicated by science?
"Between the sudden efficacy of the former and the long-acknowledged inutility of the latter?
"Between the chronic nature of the diseases and the instantaneous character of the cure?
"There is in all this a contingent force, superior to any that spring from natural causes, and, consequently, foreign to the water of which it has made use to show forth its power?"
In view of so many carefully-collected and publicly-certified facts, so striking in their nature; in view, moreover, of the conscientious and thorough inquiry made by the commission, together with the formal and united declarations of medicine and chemistry, the bishop could no longer remain unconvinced.
Nevertheless, on account of that spirit of extreme prudence which we have before remarked, Monseigneur Laurence, before giving the solemn episcopal verdict in this matter, demanded a still further guaranty of these miraculous cures—the proof of time. He allowed three years to pass. A second examination was then made. The miraculous cures still held good. No one appeared to retract former testimony or to contest any of the facts. The works of him who rules over eternity had nothing to fear from the test of time.
After this overwhelming series of proofs and certainty, Monseigneur Laurence at length pronounced the judgment which all had been awaiting. We give below its general features.
PÈRE JACQUES AND MADEMOISELLE ADRIENNE.
A SKETCH AFTER THE BLOCUS.
It was just five months since I had left it, the bright, proud Babylon, beautiful and brave and wicked, clothed in scarlet and feasting sumptuously. King Chanticleer, strutting on the Boulevards, was crowing loudly, and the myriad tribe of the Coq Gaulois, strutting up and down the city, crowed loud and shrill in responsive chorus—petits crévés, and petits mouchards, and petits gamins, and all that was petit in that grand, foolish cityful of humanity. Bedlam was abroad, singing and crowing and barking itself rabid, and scaring away from Babylon all that was not bedlam. But there were many in Babylon who were not afraid of the bedlam, who believed that crowing would by-and-by translate itself into action, into those seeds of desperate daring that none but madmen can accomplish, and that, when the bugle sounded, these bragging, swaggering maniacs would shoulder the musket, and, rushing to the fore, save France or die for her. No one saved her, but many did rush to the fore, and die for her. They were not lunatics, though, at least not many of them. The lunatics showed, as they have often done before, that there was method in their madness. They cheered on the sane, phlegmatic brethren to death and glory, while they stayed prudently at home to keep up the spirits of the capital; they were the spirit and soul of the defence, the others were but the bone and muscle of it. What is a body without a soul? The frail arm of the flesh without the nerve and strength of the spirit? Pshaw! If it were not for the crowing of King Chanticleer, there would have been no siege at all; the whole concern would have collapsed in its cradle.
The story of that Blocus has yet to be written. Of its outward and visible story, many volumes, and scores of volumes, good and bad, true and false, have been already written. But the inward story, the arcana of the defence, the exposition of that huge, blundering machine that, with its springs and levers, and wheels within wheels, snapped and broke and collapsed in the driver's hand, all this is still untold. The great Pourquoi? is still unanswered. History will solve the riddle some day, no doubt, as it solves most riddles, but before that time comes, other, grander problems of greater import to us will have been solved too, and we shall care but little for the true story of the Blocus.
"Yes, monsieur," said my concierge, when we met and talked over the events that had passed since the first of September, when I fled and left my goods and chattels to her care and the tender mercies of the Prussians and the Reds—"yes, monsieur, it is very wonderful that one doesn't hear of anybody having died of cold, though the winter was so terrible, and the fuel so scarce. It ran short almost from the beginning. We had nothing but green sticks that couldn't be persuaded to burn and do our best. I used to sit shivering in my bed, while the petiots tried to warm themselves skipping in the porte-cochère, or running up and down from the cintième till their little legs were dead beat. O Mon Dieu! je me rapellerai de cette guerre en tous les sens, monsieur."
"Did many die from starvation," I asked—"many in this neighborhood that you knew?"
"Not one, monsieur! Not one of actual hunger, though my belief is, plenty of folks died of poison. The bread we ate was worse than the want of it. Such an abomination, made out of hay and bran and oats; why, monsieur, a chiffonier's dog wouldn't have touched it in Christian times. How it kept body and soul together for any of us is more than I can understand."
"And yet nobody died of want?" I repeated.
"Not that I heard of, monsieur; unless you count Père Jacques as dead from starvation. He disappeared one morning soon after he told Mlle. Adrienne, and nobody ever knew what became of him. They said in the quartier that he went over to the Prussians; but they said that of better men than Père Jacques, and besides, what would the Prussians do with a poor old toqué like Père Jacques, I ask it of monsieur?"
I was going to say that I fully agreed with her, when we were both startled by a sudden uproar in the street round the corner. We rushed out simultaneously from the porte-cochère, where we were holding our confabulation, to see what was the matter. A crowd was collected in the middle of the Rue Billault, and was vociferously cheering somebody or something. As a matter of course, the assembly being French, there were counter-cheers; hisses and cries of "renégat! Vendu aux Prussiens! drôle," etc., intermingling with more friendly exclamations.
"Bon Dieu! ce n'est done pas fini! Is the war going to begin again? Are we going to have a revolution?" demanded my concierge, throwing up her hands to heaven and then wringing them in despair. "Will the petiots never be able to eat their panade and build their little mud-pies in peace! Oh! monsieur, monsieur, you are happy not to be a Frenchman!"
Without in the least degree demurring to this last proposition, I suggested that before giving up France as an utterly hopeless case, we would do well to see what the row was about; if indeed it were a row, for the cheering, as the crowd grew, seemed to rise predominant above the hissing. Already reassured, I advanced boldly toward the centre of disturbance, my concierge following, and keeping a tight grip of the skirts of my coat for greater security.
"Vive Mlle. Adrienne! Donne la patte Mlle. Adrienne! Vive le Père Jacques!" The cries, capped by peals of laughter which were suddenly drowned in the uproarious braying of a donkey, reverberated through the street and deafened us as we drew near.
With a shout of laughter, my concierge dropped my skirts, and clapping her hands:
"Comment!" she cried, "she is alive, then! He did not eat her! He did not sell her! Vive le Père Jacques! Vive Mlle. Adrienne!"
Those of my readers who have lived any time in the quartier of the Champs Elysées will recognize Mlle. Adrienne as an old friend, and rejoice to learn that, thanks to the intelligent devotion of Père Jacques, she did not share the fate of her asinine sisterhood, but has actually gone through the horrors of the siege of Paris and lived to tell the tale. Those who have not the pleasure of her acquaintance will perhaps be glad to make it, and to hear something of so remarkable a personage.
For years—I am afraid to say how many, but ten is certainly within the mark—Père Jacques's donkey has been a familiar object in the Rue Billault and the Rue de Berri, and that part of the Faubourg St. Honoré and the Champs Elysées which includes those streets. Why Père Jacques christened his ass Mlle. Adrienne nobody knows. Some say, out of vengeance against a certain blue-eyed Adrienne who won his heart and broke it; others say, only love for a faithful Adrienne who broke his heart by dying; but this is pure conjecture; Père Jacques himself is reticent on the subject, and, when questioned once by a curious, impertinent man, he refused to explain himself further than by remarking, "Que chacun avait son idée, et que son idée à lui, c'etait Mlle. Adrienne," and having said this he took a lump of sugar from his pocket and presented it affectionately to his idée, who munched it with evident satisfaction, and acknowledged her sense of the attention by a long and uproarious bray.
"Voyons, Mlle. Adrienne! Calmons-nous!" said Père Jacques in a tone of persuasive authority. "Calmons-nous, ma chérie!"—the braying grew louder and louder—"wilt thou be silent? Uplà, Mlle. Adrienne! Ah, les femmes, les femmes! Toujours bavardes! La-a-a-à, Mlle. Adrienne!"
This was the usual style of conversation between the two. Père Jacques presented lumps of sugar which were invariably recognized by a bray, or, more properly, a series of brays, such as no other donkey in France or Navarre but herself could send forth; and while it lasted Père Jacques kept up a running commentary of remonstrance.
"Voyons, Mlle. Adrienne! Sapristi, veux-tu te taire? A-t-on jamais vu! Lotte, veux-tu en fini-i-i-r!"
Though it was an old novelty in the quartier, it seemed never to have lost its savor, and as soon as Père Jacques and his little cart, full of apples, or oranges, or cauliflowers, as the case might be, were seen or heard at the further end of the street, the gamins left off marbles and pitch-and-toss to bully and chaff Père Jacques and greet his idée with a jocular "Bonjour, Mlle. Adrienne." The tradesmen looked up from their weights and measures, laughing, as the pair went by.
When provisions began to run short during the Blocus, Père Jacques grew uneasy, not for himself, but for Mlle. Adrienne. Hard-hearted jesters advised him to fatten her up for the market; ass-flesh was delicate and rarer than horse-flesh, and fetched six francs a pound; it was no small matter to turn six francs in these famine times, when there were no more apples or cauliflowers to sell; Mlle. Adrienne was a burden now instead of a help to her master; the little cart stood idle in the corner; there was nothing to trundle, and it was breaking his heart to see her growing thin for want of rations, and to watch her spirits drooping for want of exercise and lumps of sugar. For more than a fortnight Père Jacques deprived himself of a morsel of the favorite dainty, and doled out his last demikilog to her with miserly economy, hoping always that the gates would be opened before she came to the last lump.
"Voyons, ma fille!" Père Jacques would say, as she munched a bit half the usual size of the now precious bonbon. "Cheer up, ma bouriquette! Be reasonable, Mlle. Adrienne, be reasonable, and bear thy trials like an ass, patiently and bravely, not like a man, grumbling and despairing. Paperlotte, Mlle. Adrienne! if it were not for thee I should be out on the ramparts, and send those coquins to the right-abouts myself. Les gredins! they are not content with drilling our soldiers and starving our citizens, but they must rob thee of thy bit of sugar, my pretty one. Mille tonnerres! if I had but their necks under my arm for one squeeze!"
And, entering into the grief and indignation of her master, Mlle. Adrienne would set up an agonized bray.
Thus comforting one another, the pair bore up through their trials. But at last came the days of eating mice and rats, and bread that a dog in good circumstances would have turned up its nose at a month ago, and then Père Jacques shook in his sabots. He dared not show himself abroad with Mlle. Adrienne, and not only that, but he lived in chronic terror of a raid being made on her at home. The mischievous urchins who had amused themselves at the expense of his paternal feelings in days of comparative plenty, gave him no peace or rest now that the wolf was really at the door. Requisitions were being made in private houses to see that no stores were hoarded up while the people outside were famishing. One rich family, who had prudently bought a couple of cows at the beginning of the Blocus, after vainly endeavoring to keep the fact a secret, and surrounding the precious beasts with as much mystery and care as ever Egyptian worshippers bestowed on the sacred Isis, were forced to give them up to the commonwealth. This caused a great sensation in the quartier. Père Jacques was the first to hear it, and the gamins improved the opportunity by declaring to him that the republic had issued a decree that all asses were to be seized next day, all such as could not speak, they added facetiously, and there was to be a general slaughter of them, a massacre des innocents, the little brutes called it, at the abattoir of the Rue Valois. The fact of its being at the Rue Valois was a small mercy for which they reminded Père Jacques to be duly grateful, inasmuch as, it being close at hand, he might accompany Mlle. Adrienne to the place of execution, give her a parting kiss, and hear her last bray of adieu. At this cynical climax, Père Jacques started up in a rage, and seizing his stick, set to vigorously belaboring the diabolical young torturers, who took to their heels, yelling and screaming like frightened guinea-pigs, while Mlle. Adrienne, who stood ruminating in a corner of the room, opened a rattling volley of brays on the fugitives.
All that night Père Jacques lay awake in terror. Every whistle of the wind, every creak in the door, every stir and sound, set his heart thumping violently against his ribs; every moment he was expecting the dreaded domiciliary visit. What was he to do? Where was he to fly? How was he to cheat the brigands and save Mlle. Adrienne? The night wore out, and the dawn broke, and the raid was still unaccomplished. As soon as it was light, Père Jacques rose and dressed himself, and sat down on a wooden stool close by Mlle. Adrienne, and pondered. Since her life had been in jeopardy, he had removed her from her out-house in the court to his own private room on the ground-floor close by.
"Que me conseilles-tu, Mlle. Adrienne?" murmured the distracted parent, speaking in a low tone, impelled by the instinct that drives human beings to seek sympathy somewhere, from a cat or a dog if they have no fellow-creature to appeal to, Père Jacques had contracted a habit of talking out loud to his dumb companion when they were alone, and consulting her on any perplexing point. Suddenly a bright idea struck Père Jacques; he would go and consult Mère Richard.
Mère Richard lived in a neighboring court amidst a numerous family of birds of many species, bullfinches, canaries, and linnets. She had often suggested to Père Jacques to adopt a little songster by way of cheering his lonely den, and had once offered him a young German canary of her own bringing up.
"It's as good as a baby for tricks and company, and nothing so dear to keep," urged Mère Richard.
But Père Jacques had gratefully declined. "Mlle. Adrienne is company enough for me," he said, "and it might hurt her feelings if I took up with a bird now, thanks to you all the same, voisine."
To-day, as he neared the house, he looked in vain for the red and green cages that used to hang out au troisième on either side of Mère Richard's windows. The birds were gone. Where? Père Jacques felt a sympathetic thrill of horror, and with a heavy heart mounted the dark little stairs, no longer merry with the sound of chirping from the tidy little room au troisième. He refrained, through delicate consideration for Mère Richard's feelings, from asking questions, but, casting his eyes round the room, he beheld the empty cages ranged in a row behind the door.
But Mère Richard had a donkey. There was no comparison to be tolerated for a moment between it and Mlle. Adrienne, still their positions were identical, and Mère Richard, who was a wise woman, would help him in his present difficulty, and if she could not help him she would, at any rate, sympathize with him, which was the next best thing to helping him. But Mère Richard, to his surprise, had heard nothing of the impending raid on donkeys. When he explained to her how the case stood, instead of breaking out into lamentations, she burst into a chuckling laugh.
"Pas possible! Bouriquette good to be eaten, and the republic going to buy her, and pay me six francs a pound for her! Père Jaques, it's too good to be true," declared the unnatural old Harpagon.
Père Jacques was unable to contain his indignation. He vowed that rather than let her fall into the hands of the cannibals, he would destroy Mlle. Adrienne with his own hand; he would kill any man in the republic, from Favre to Gambetta, who dared to lay a finger on her; aye, that he would, if he were to swing for it the next hour!
"Père Jacques, you are an imbecile," observed Mère Richard, taking a pinch of snuff; "you remind me of a story my bonhomme used to tell of two camarades of his that he met on their way to be hanged; one of them didn't mind it, and walked on quietly, holding his tongue; but the other didn't like it at all, and kept howling and whining, and making a tapage de diable. At last the quiet one lost patience, and turning round on the other, 'Eh grand bétat,' he cried, 'si tu n'en veux pas, n'en dégoute pas les autres!'"
Père Jaques saw the point of the story, and, taking the hint, stood up to go.
"What did you do with the birds?" he demanded sternly, as he was leaving the room.
"Sold four of them for three francs apiece, and ate three of them, and uncommonly good they were," said the wretched woman, with unblushing heartlessness.
"Monster!" groaned Père Jacques, and hurried from her presence.
All that day he and Mlle. Adrienne stayed at home with their door and window barred and bolted; but night came, and the domiciliary visit was still a threat. Next day, however, the little door stood open as usual, and Père Jacques was to be seen hammering away at the dilapidated legs of a table that he was mending for a neighbor at the rate of twenty-five centimes a leg; but Mlle. Adrienne was not there. Had Père Jacques put an end to his agony by actually killing her, as he had threatened, and so saved her from the ignoble fate of the shambles? Or had he, haunted by the phantom of hunger which was now staring at him with its pale spectral eyes from the near background, yielded to the old man's love of life, and sold his friend to prolong it and escape himself from a ghastly death? Most people believed the latter alternative, but nobody knew for certain. When Mlle. Adrienne's name was mentioned, Père Jacques would frown, and give unmistakable signs of displeasure. If the subject was pressed, he would seize his stick, and, making a moulinet over his head with it, prepare an expletive that the boldest never waited to receive. One day he was caught crying bitterly in his now solitary home, and muttering to himself between the sobs, "Ma pauvre fille! Mlle. Adrienne! Je le suivrai bientôt—ah les coquins, les brigands, les monstres!" This was looked upon as conclusive. The monsters in question could only be the Shylocks of the abattoir who had tempted him with blood-money for Mlle. Adrienne. When curiosity was thus far satisfied, the gamins ceased to worry Père Jacques; the lonely old man became an object of pity to everybody, even to the gamins themselves; when they met him now they touched their caps, with "Bonjour, Père Jacques!" and spared him the cruel jeer that had been their customary salutation of late: "Mlle. Adrienne à la casserole! Bon appétit, Père Jacques!"
The days wore on, and the weeks, and the months. Paris, wan and pale and hunger-stricken, still held out. Winter had come, and thrown its icy pall upon the city, hiding her guilty front "under innocent snow;" the nights were long and cold, the dawn was desolate, the tepid noon brought no warmth to the perishing, fire-bound multitude. No sign of succor came to them from without. In vain they watched and waited, persecuting time with hope. The cannon kept up its sobbing recitative through the black silence of the night; through the white stillness of the day. Hunger gnawed into their vitals, till even hope, weary with disappointment, grew sick and died.
One morning, the neighbors noticed Père Jacques's door and window closed long after the hour when he was wont to be up and busy. They knocked, and, getting no answer, turned the handle of the door; it was neither locked nor barred, merely closed, as if the master were within; but he was not; the little room was tenantless, and almost entirely stripped; the mattress and the scanty store of bed-clothes were gone; the iron bedstead, a table, a stool, and two cane chairs, were the only sticks of furniture that remained; the shelves were bare of the bright pewter tankards and platters that used to adorn them; the gilt clock with its abortion of a Pegasus bestrid by a grenadier, which had been the glory of the chimney-piece, had disappeared. What did it all mean? Had the enemy made a raid on Père Jacques and his property during the night, and carried away the lot in a balloon? Great was the consternation, and greater still the gossip of the little community, when the mysterious event became known through the quartier. What had become of Père Jacques? Had he been kidnapped, or had he been murdered, or had he taken flight of his own accord, and whither, and why? Nothing transpired to throw any light on the mystery, and the gossips, tired of guessing, soon ceased to think about it, and, like many another nine days' wonder, Père Jacques's disappearance died a natural death.
A day came at last when the mitrailleuse hushed its hideous shriek, the cannon left off booming, the wild beasts of war were silent. Paris cried, "Merci!" and the gates were opened. The city, like a sick man healed of a palsy, rose up, and shook herself and rubbed her eyes, and ate plentifully after her long fast. Many came back from the outposts who were wept over as dead. There were strange meetings in many quartiers during those first days that followed the capitulation. But no one brought any news of Père Jacques. There were too many interests nearer and dearer to think of, and, in the universal excitement of shame and vengeance and rare flashes of joy, he and Mlle. Adrienne were forgotten as if they had never been. But when, on the day of my return to Paris, my conversation with my concierge was interrupted by the cheering of the crowd in the Rue Billault, and when the cause of the hubbub was made known, the fact that both Père Jacques and his idée were well remembered and, as the newspapers put it, universally esteemed by a large circle of friends and admirers, was most emphatically attested. Nothing, indeed, could be more gratifying than the manner in which their resurrection was received. The pair looked very much the worse for their sojourn in the other world, wherever it was, to which they had emigrated. Mlle. Adrienne's appearance was particularly affecting. She was worn to skin and bone; and certainly, if Père Jacques, yielding to the pangs of hunger, had sacrificed his idée to his life, and taken her to the shambles, she would not have fetched more than a brace of good rats, or, at best, some ten francs, from the inhuman butchers of the Rue Valois. She dragged her legs, and shook and stumbled as if the weight of her attenuated person were too much for them. Even her old enemies, the gamins, were moved to pity, while Père Jacques, laughing and crying and apostrophizing Mlle. Adrienne in his old familiar way, cheered her on to their old home. How she ever got there is as great a marvel as how she lived to be led there to-day; for, what between physical exhaustion and mental anxiety—for the crowd kept overpowering her with questions and caresses—and what between the well-meant but injudicious attentions of sundry little boys who kept stuffing unintermitting bits of straw and lumps of sugar into her mouth, it is little short of a miracle that she did not choke and expire on the macadam of the Rue Billault.
Many an ass has been lionized before, and many a one will be so again. It is a common enough sight in these days, but never did hero or heroine of the tribe bear herself more becomingly on the trying occasion than Mlle. Adrienne. As to Père Jacques, he bore himself as well as he could, trying hard to look dignified and unconscious, while in his inmost heart he was bursting with pride. While he and Mlle. Adrienne ambled on side by side, some facetious person remarked that Père Jacques looked quite beside himself. This, indeed, was a great day for him and his ass. Yet, notwithstanding that his heart was moved within him and softened towards all men—nay, towards all boys—he could not be induced to say a word as to where he had been, or what he had done, or how he and Mlle. Adrienne had fared in the wilderness, or what manner of wilderness it was, or anything that could furnish the remotest clue to their existence since the day when they had separately disappeared off the horizon of the Rue Billault. Provisions were still too dear, during the first fortnight after the capitulation, to allow of Père Jacques resuming his old trade of apples or cauliflowers; besides, Mademoiselle Adrienne wanted rest.
"Pauvre chérie! il faut qu'elle se remette un peu de la vache enragée," he remarked tenderly, when his friends condoled with him on her forced inactivity. He would not hear of hiring her out for work, as some of them proposed. Mère Richard came and offered a fabulous price for the loan of her for three days, with a view to a stroke of business at the railway station, where food was pouring in from London. Père Jacques shook his fist at the carnivorous old woman, and warned her never to show her unnatural old face in his house again, or it might be worse for her.