"Dead!" cried the kind-hearted girl, her dark eyes filling with compassionating tears; "poor little thing! But it cannot be true that your father is in danger of a prison;" and, almost stupefied with surprise, she gazed alternately from the children to Morel, and from him to the bailiffs.
"I say, my girl," said Bourdin, approaching Rigolette, "as you do seem to have the use of your senses, just make this good man hear reason, will you? His child has just died. Well, that can't be helped now; but, you see, he is a-keeping of us, because we're a-waiting to take him to the debtors' prison, being sheriffs' officers, duly sworn in and appointed. Tell him so!"
"Then it is true!" exclaimed the feeling girl.
"True? I should say it was and no mistake! Now, don't you see, while the mother is busy with the dead babby—and, bless you! she's got it there, hugging it up in bed, and won't part with it!—she won't notice us? So I want the father to be off while she isn't thinking nothing about it!"
"Good God! Good God!" replied Rigolette, in deep distress; "what is to be done?"
"Done? Why, pay the money, or go to prison! There is nothing between them two ways. If you happen to have two or three thousand francs by you you can oblige him with, why, shell out, and we'll be off, and glad enough to be gone!"
"How can you," cried Rigolette, "be so barbarous as to make a jest of such distress as this?"
"Well, then," rejoined the other man, "all joking apart, if you really do wish to be useful, try to prevent the woman from seeing us take her husband away. You will spare them both a very disagreeable ten minutes!"
Coarse as was this counsel, it was not destitute of good sense; and Rigolette, feeling she could do nothing else, approached the bedside of Madeleine, who, distracted by her grief, appeared unconscious of the presence of Rigolette, as, gathering the children together, she knelt with them beside their afflicted mother.
Meanwhile Morel, upon recovering from his temporary wildness, had sunk into a state of deep and bitter reflections upon his present position, which, now that his mind saw things through a calmer medium, only increased the poignancy of his sufferings. Since the notary had proceeded to such extremities, any hope from his mercy was vain. He felt there was nothing left but to submit to his fate, and let the law take its course.