"Silence!"
"Quick! Help! She's killing me! Fouchette! It's Mademoiselle Fouchette!"
The matron was thus guided to Fouchette's bed, where she found the latter tearing the big girl's ear with her teeth, and with her hands clawing the big girl's face.
To this moment Fouchette had not uttered a word. Then she let flow a torrent of language such as had never before been heard within the sacred precincts of Le Bon Pasteur. She could no more be stopped than an avalanche.
The girls of the dormitory closed their ears in their fright at this flood of profanity.
"Stop! stop! stop!" cried the matron, now overcome with horror. "You belong in the Reformatory! You shall go to the Reformatory! You shall have the bath and the paddle, you vile vixen!"
And Fouchette's vocabulary having been exhausted for the time being, she ceased.
Meanwhile, a light was brought, and attendants came running in from the other parts of the building.
Notwithstanding the confused explanation, and the fact that the aggressor's bed was at some distance from the spot where the two were discovered, which sustained the charge of Fouchette that the latter had been first attacked, the terrible condition of the big girl was such that Fouchette was sent to a cell and held in close confinement till the next evening.
She was then taken to Sister Angélique, where she was examined as to her version of the occurrence. The victim of her nails and teeth also had a hearing.