"All this is for your interest; profit by it, for I only speak once," said Badinot, in a patronizing manner, as he left the shop.
Is it not needless for us to say that this woman and girl who lived so solitary, were victims of the cupidity of the notary? We will conduct the reader into the miserable room they occupied.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE VICTIMS OF AN ABUSE OF TRUST.
Let the reader imagine a closet situated on the fourth story of the house. A pale, gloomy light hardly penetrated this narrow apartment, through a little window of cracked, dirty glass, with a single shutter; a yellowish, dilapidated paper covered the walls; from the broken ceiling hung long spider-webs. The floor, broken in several places, showed the beams and laths of the room below. A deal table, a chair, an old trunk without a lock, and a flock bed with coarse sheets and an old woolen covering—such was the furniture. On the chair was seated the Baroness de Fermont. In the bed reposed Claire de Fermont (such were the names of the two victims of Jacques Ferrand).
Possessing but one narrow bed, the mother and daughter slept by turns, dividing thus the hours of the night. The mother had too much anguish, too many inquietudes, to get much repose; but the daughter found some moments of rest and forgetfulness.
She was now asleep. Nothing could be more touching, more sorrowful, than the sight of this misery, imposed by the cupidity of the notary on two women, until then accustomed to the sweet enjoyments of a life of ease, and surrounded in their native town with that consideration which an honorable and honored family always inspire.
The Baroness de Fermont was about thirty-six years of age; her countenance at once expresses mildness and excellence; her features, formerly of remarkable beauty, are now sadly changed; her black hair, divided on her forehead and confined behind her head, already shows some tresses of silver. Clothed in a dress of mourning, tattered in several places, the Baroness de Fermont, with her hand supporting her head, leaned against the wretched bed of her child, and regarded her with inexpressible anguish.
Claire was only sixteen; her complexion had lost its dazzling purity; her beautiful dark eyelashes reached to her hollow cheeks. Once humid and rosy, but now dry and pale, her lips, half-opened, displayed the enamel of her teeth; the rude contact of the bedclothes had given a red appearance in several places to the delicate neck, arms, and shoulders of the young girl. From time to time a slight shudder passed over her, as if she had some painful dream. For a long period the Baroness de Fermont had not wept; she looked on her daughter with a dry and inflamed eye, consumed by a slow fever, which was undermining her. Each day she found herself weaker; but fearing to alarm Claire, and not willing, we may say, to alarm herself, she struggled with all her strength against the first symptoms of her sickness. Through motives of similar generosity, the daughter endeavored to conceal her sufferings. These two unhappy creatures, afflicted with the same griefs, were yet to be afflicted with the same disease.
In misfortunes there are often moments when the future prospect is so frightful, that the most energetic minds dare not look it in the face, but shut their eyes, and endeavor to deceive themselves by mad illusions. Such was the position of the Fermonts. To express the tortures of this woman, during the long hours when she was thus contemplating her sleeping child, thinking of the past, the present, and the future, would be to describe what, in the holy and sacred griefs of a mother, there is the most poignant, the most desperate, the most insane; enchanting recollections, sinister fears, terrible foresights, bitter regrets, extreme dejectedness, ejaculations of powerless rage against the author of so much misery, vain supplications, violent prayers, and, finally, frightful doubts of the all-powerful justice of Him who remains inexorable to this cry, dragged from the bottom of the maternal heart—to this sacred cry, of which the echo ought to reach Heaven, "Pity for my child!"