"How bad he must be!"
"My poor children fell on their knees, begging for mercy; Catharine also. Then he said to my daughter, swearing like a madman, 'If you do not come with me, I will finish the job with your mother!' I vomited blood. I felt myself half dead; but I cried to Catharine, 'Rather let him kill me! but do not follow your father!' 'Will you not be silent, then?' said Duport, giving me another blow, which made me lose all consciousness."
"What misery! what misery!"
"When I came to myself I found my two little boys beside me weeping."
"And your daughter?"
"Gone!" cried the poor mother, sobbing convulsively; "yes, gone! My other children told me that their father had struck her, threatening to take what life I had remaining on the spot. Then, what could you expect? the poor child was bewildered; she threw herself upon me for a last embrace, kissed her little brothers, and then my husband carried her off! Ah! that bad woman waited for them at the door, I am sure!"
"And could you not complain to the police?"
"At first I could think of nothing but Catharine's departure, but I soon felt great pains all over my body, I could not walk. Alas! what I had so much dreaded arrived. Yes—I had said to my brother, 'Some day my husband will beat me so hard—so hard, that I shall be obliged to go to a hospital. Then, my children, what will become of them?' And now here I am, at the hospital, and I say, What will become of my children?"
"But is there not any justice, then, my God! for the poor?"
"Too dear! too dear for us, as my brother said," answered Jeanne Duport, with bitterness. "My neighbors went to seek the police, they came: it was painful for me to denounce Duport, but on account of my daughter it was necessary. I said only that, in a quarrel I had with him about taking away my daughter, he had pushed me; that it was nothing, but that I wanted my daughter back again."