"Ah! you see!" broke in Séverine. "Wasn't I right to drop him a line, and pay him a visit along with you, this morning, before you went to receive your wigging? I knew he would get us out of the trouble."
"Yes, he is very fond of you," resumed Roubaud, "and is all powerful in the company. What is the use of being a good servant? Ah! the manager did not stint me of praise: slow to take the initiative, but of good conduct, obedient, courageous, briefly, all sorts of qualities! Well, my dear, if you had not been my wife, and if Grandmorin had not pleaded my cause out of friendship for you, it would have been all up with me. I should have been sent to do penance at some small station."
She was staring fixedly into space, and murmured, as if speaking to herself:
"Oh! certainly, he is a man with great influence."
There was a silence, and she sat with her eyes wide open and lost in thought. She had ceased eating. No doubt she was thinking of the days of her childhood, far away, at the Château of Doinville, four leagues from Rouen. She had never known her mother. When her father, the gardener Aubry died, she was commencing her thirteenth year; and it was at this period that the President, already a widower, had placed her with his daughter Berthe in charge of his sister, Madame Bonnehon, herself the widow of a manufacturer, from whom she had inherited the château.
Berthe, who was two years older than Séverine, had been wedded six months after the marriage of the latter with Roubaud, to M. de Lachesnaye, a little, shrivelled-up, sallow-complexioned man, judge at the Rouen Court of Appeal. In the preceding year President Grandmorin was still at the head of this court at Rouen, which was his own part of the country, when he retired on a pension, after a brilliant career.
Born in 1804, substitute at Digne on the morrow of the events in 1830, then at Fontainebleau, then at Paris, he had afterwards filled the posts of procurator at Troyes; advocate-general at Rennes; and finally, first president at Rouen. A multi-millionaire, he had been member of the County Council since 1855, and on the same day as he retired, he had been made Commander of the Legion of Honour. As far back as she could recollect, she remembered him just as he was now—thick-set and strong, prematurely grey, but the golden grey of one formerly fair; his hair cut Brutus fashion, his beard clipped short, no moustache, a square face, which eyes of a hard blue and a big nose rendered severe. He was harsh on being approached, and made everyone about him tremble.
Séverine was so absorbed that Roubaud had to raise his voice, repeating twice over:
"Well, what are you thinking about?"
She started, gave a little shudder, as if surprised, and trembled with alarm.