“Monsieur, it was the Cagots stole him.”
“Did they confess to it?”
“Confess! the pariahs, the accursed! It is not in nature that wretches so vile should incriminate themselves. But there had been evidence of them in the neighbourhood; one, indeed, had been employed by Draçon—whose farm abuts on the lower grounds of the chateau—to roof a shed with tiles. This Cagot Nicette had seen upon many occasions covertly regarding the child—conversing with him even, and doubtless, with devilish astuteness, corrupting his mind. Two days after the job was completed and the man disappeared, the unhappy infant was nowhere to be found. They sought him far and wide. Nicette was prostrate—inconsolable. She had been foremost in the denunciation of Théroigne. Now, she herself, desolated, defrauded of him to whom she had been as a mother—well, God must judge, monsieur. At last the strange gloating of that sinister creature recurred to her, and she spoke of it. With oaths of frenzy, the villagers armed themselves and broke into the woods, where the miscreants were known to sojourn. Their camp was deserted. They were fled none knew whither; and none to this day has set eyes on them or the little Legrand.”
“Or questioned, I’ll swear, the unconscionable flimsiness of such evidence. And Nicette, M. Boppard?”
“She wandered like a ghost; in the woods—always in the woods, as if she maddened to somewhere find, hidden under the fern and moss, the mutilated body of her little fanfan. You recall, monsieur, the old eaten tree, the despoiled Samson of the forest, that held the moon in its withered arms on a memorable night of jest and revel? Mon Dieu! but the ravishing times!”
“The tree, my Boppard? Of a surety I remember the tree.”
“It became the nucleus, monsieur—the clearing in which it stands the headquarters, as it were, of her operations of search. There appeared no reason for this, but surely a divine intuition compelled her. At all periods she haunted the spot. Oftentimes was she to be secretly observed kneeling and praying there in an ecstasy of emotion. To the Blessed Virgin she directed her petitions. ‘Restore to me,’ she wept, ‘my darling Baptiste, and I swear to dedicate myself, for evermore a maid, to thy service!’ One day, by preconcerted plan, a body of villagers, armed with billhooks and axes, with the Curé at their head, surprised her at her post. ‘It is not for nothing, we are convinced,’ said the good father, ‘that you are led to frequent these thickets. Hence we will not proceed until we have laid bare the ground to the limit of ten perches, and, by the grace of God, revealed the mystery!’”
“Well, M. Boppard?”
“Now, monsieur, was confessed the wonder. At the priest’s words, the girl leapt to her feet. Her eyes, it is said by those that were there, burned like the lamp before the little altar of Our Lady of Succour. Her face was as white as cardamines—transparent, spiritual, like a phantom’s against the dark leaves. ‘You must do nothing,’ she said—‘nothing—nothing. Here but now, at the foot of the tree, the Blessed Virgin revealed herself to me as I kneeled and wept. Her heel was on the head of a serpent, whose every scale, different in colour to the next, was a gleaming agate; and in her hand she held a purple globe that was liquid and did not break, but round whose surface travelled without ceasing the firmament of white worlds in miniature. “Nicette,” she said, in a voice that seemed to have gathered the sweetness of all the sainted dead, “weep and search no more, my child; for some day thy brother shall be restored to thee. I, the Mother of Christ, promise thee this!”’”
“Boppard,” said Ned quietly, “is the description yours or Mademoiselle Legrand’s?”