The steward, confounded, did not wait to be discharged; he fled, and, to escape the vengeance of Madame de la Grenouillère, embarked as cook on board of a merchant vessel bound for Oceanica.
It was afterward learned that this ship had been wrecked upon the Sandwich Islands, and that the savages had eaten Lustucru. History records that at the moment of expiring he pronounced but a single word, the name of Moumouth!
Lustucru flies.
What was it that brought this name to the lips of the guilty man? Was it remorse? or was it the last explosion of an unforgiving hatred? This is what history has neglected to inform us.
The health of Madame de la Grenouillère had been altered by the heavy shocks she had experienced in losing her favorite animals. The tenderness and graces of Moumouth would perhaps have been sufficient to attach her to life; but the respectable lady had reached an age when sorrows press very heavily. Mother Michel had the grief, one morning, to find the Countess dead in her bed; her face was so calm and bore so plainly the impress of all her lovable qualities, that one would have believed she slept. She was nearly in her seventy-ninth year.
By her will, which she had deposited with her lawyer, she had left to Moumouth and Mother Michel an income of two thousand livres, to revert, in case of the death of either, to the survivor.
Mother Michel took up her residence near her sister, provided handsomely for all the children, and selected for her own retreat a pretty cottage situated in Low-Breton upon the banks of the river among the green trees.
Mother Michel’s Cottage.