A ring at the bell came as a surprise.
“Who can it be, mother darling?” asked Jeanne, who had jumped on her chair. “Oh! it’s you!” she continued, as Monsieur Rambaud entered the room. “Why did you ring so loudly? You gave me quite a fright.”
The worthy man was in consternation—to tell the truth, his tug at the bell had been a little too violent.
“I am not myself to-day, I’m ill,” the child resumed. “You must not frighten me.”
Monsieur Rambaud displayed the greatest solicitude. What was the matter with his poor darling? He only sat down, relieved, when Hélène had signed to him that the child was in her dismals, as Rosalie was wont to say. A call from him in the daytime was a rare occurrence, and so he at once set about explaining the object of his visit. It concerned some fellow-townsman of his, an old workman who could find no employment owing to his advanced years, and who lived with his paralytic wife in a tiny little room. Their wretchedness could not be pictured. He himself had gone up that morning to make a personal investigation. Their lodging was a mere hole under the tiles, with a swing window, through whose broken panes the wind beat in. Inside, stretched on a mattress, he had found a woman wrapped in an old curtain, while the man squatted on the floor in a state of stupefaction, no longer finding sufficient courage even to sweep the place.
“Oh! poor things, poor things!” exclaimed Hélène, moved to tears.
It was not the old workman who gave Monsieur Rambaud any uneasiness. He would remove him to his own house and find him something to do. But there was the wife with palsied frame, whom the husband dared not leave for a moment alone, and who had to be rolled up like a bundle; where could she be put? what was to be done with her?
“I thought of you,” he went on. “You must obtain her instant admission to an asylum. I should have gone straight to Monsieur Deberle, but I imagined you knew him better and would have greater influence with him. If he would be kind enough to interest himself in the matter, it could all be arranged to-morrow.”
Trembling with pity, her cheeks white, Jeanne listened to the tale.
“Oh, mamma!” she murmured with clasped hands, “be kind—get the admission for the poor woman!”