“Keep it yourself, my sister,” said she, pushing it back again. “You are more delicate than I.”
“Indeed, madame,” said Jeanne, “it grieves me much to see you suffer from the cold; but wood is now so dear, and my stock was exhausted a week ago.”
“You said, madame, that you were unhappy in having a mother,” said the elder lady, returning to the subject.
“Yes, madame. Doubtless, such a blasphemy shocks you much, does it not?” said Jeanne; “but hear my explanation. I have already had the honor to tell you that my father made a mésalliance, and married his housekeeper. Marie Jossel, my mother, instead of feeling gratified and proud of the honor he had done her, began by ruining my father, which certainly was not difficult to a person determined to consult only her own pleasures. And having reduced him to sell all his remaining property, she induced him to go to Paris to claim the rights to which his name entitled him. My father was easily persuaded; perhaps he hoped in the justice of the king. He came then, having first turned all he possessed into money. He had, besides me, another daughter, and a son.
“His son, unhappy as myself, vegetates in the lowest ranks of the army; the daughter, my poor sister, was abandoned, on the evening of our departure, before the house of a neighboring farmer.
“The journey exhausted our little resources—my father wore himself out in fruitless appeals—we scarcely ever saw him—our house was wretched—and my mother, to whom a victim was necessary, vented her discontent and ill-humor upon me: she even reproached me with what I ate, and for the slightest fault I was unmercifully beaten. The neighbors, thinking to serve me, told my father of the treatment I experienced. He endeavored to protect me, but his interference only served to embitter her still more against me.
“At last my father fell ill, and was confined first to the house, and then to his bed. My mother banished me from his room on the pretext that I disturbed him. She made me now learn a sentence, which, child as I was, I shrank from saying; but she would drive me out into the street with blows, ordering me to repeat it to each passer-by, if I did not wish to be beaten to death.”
“And what was this sentence?” asked the elder lady.
“It was this, madame: ‘Have pity on a little orphan, who descends in a direct line from Henri de Valois.’”
“What a shame!” cried the ladies.