Clotilde answered only with an artless gesture, that expressed all her repugnance to betray her master in this way.
“What a child you are! I swear to you that I will take nothing; I will not even disturb anything. Only as we are alone and as Pascal never reappears before dinner, we might assure ourselves of what there is in there, might we not? Oh! nothing but a glance, on my word of honor.”
The young girl stood motionless, unwilling, still, to give her consent.
“And then, it may be that I am mistaken; no doubt there are none of those bad things there that I have told you of.”
This was decisive; she ran to take the key from the drawer, and she herself opened wide the press.
“There, grandmother, the papers are up there.”
Martine had gone, without a word, to station herself at the door of the doctor’s chamber, her ear on the alert, listening to the pestle, while Félicité, as if riveted to the spot by emotion, regarded the papers. At last, there they were, those terrible documents, the nightmare that had poisoned her life! She saw them, she was going to touch them, to carry them away! And she reached up, straining her little legs, in the eagerness of her desire.
“It is too high, my kitten,” she said. “Help me; give them to me!”
“Oh! not that, grandmother! Take a chair!”
Félicité took a chair, and mounted slowly upon it. But she was still too short. By an extraordinary effort she raised herself, lengthening her stature until she was able to touch the envelopes of strong blue paper with the tips of her fingers; and her fingers traveled over them, contracting nervously, scratching like claws. Suddenly there was a crash—it was a geological specimen, a fragment of marble that had been on a lower shelf, and that she had just thrown down.