"Alas, madame, La Chouette was quite capable of doing what she said! Fortunately, the man on horseback replied that he would not have any harm done to me, and all he wanted was to have me confined somewhere for two months in a place whence I could neither go out nor be allowed to write to any one. Then La Chouette proposed to take me to a man's called Bras Rouge, who keeps a tavern in the Champs Elysées. In this tavern there are several subterranean chambers, and one of these, La Chouette said, would serve me for a prison. The man on horseback agreed to this proposition; and he promised me that, after remaining two months at Bras Rouge's, I should be properly taken care of, and not be sorry for having quitted the farm at Bouqueval."
"This man gave money to La Chouette, and promised her more when she should bring me from Bras Rouge's, and then galloped away. Our hackney-coach continued its way on to Paris; and a short time before we reached the barrier the Schoolmaster said to La Chouette, 'You want to shut Goualeuse up in one of Bras Rouge's cellars, when you know very well that, being so close to the river's side, these cellars are always under water in the winter! Do you wish to drown her?' 'Yes,' replied La Chouette."
"Poor girl! What had you ever done to this horrid woman?"
"Nothing, madame; and from my very infancy she had always been so full of hatred towards me. The Schoolmaster replied, 'I won't have Goualeuse drowned! She sha'n't go to Bras Rouge's!' La Chouette was as astonished as I was, madame, to hear this man defend me thus, and she flew into a violent rage, and swore she would take me to Bras Rouge's in spite of the Schoolmaster. 'I defy you!' said he, 'for I have got Goualeuse by the arm, and I will not let go my hold of her; and, if you come near her, I'll strangle you!' 'What do you mean, then, to do with her,' cried La Chouette, 'since she must be concealed somewhere for two months, so that no one may know where she is?' 'There's a way,' said the Schoolmaster. 'We are going by the Champs Elysées; we will stop the coach a little way off the guard-house, and you shall go to Bras Rouge's tavern. It is midnight, and you will be sure to find him; bring him here, and he shall lead La Goualeuse to the guard-house, declaring that she is a fille de la Cité, whom he has found loitering about his house. As girls are sentenced to three months' imprisonment if found in the Champs Elysées, and as La Goualeuse is still on the police books, she will be apprehended and sent to St. Lazare, where she will be better taken care of and concealed than in Bras Rouge's cellar.' 'But,' answered La Chouette, 'Goualeuse will not allow herself to be arrested even at the corps-de-garde. She will declare that we have carried her off, and give information against us; and, supposing even that she goes to prison, she will write to her protectors, and all will be discovered.' 'No, she will go to prison willingly,' answered the Schoolmaster; 'and she shall take an oath not to give any information against any person as long as she is in St. Lazare, nor afterwards, either. This is a debt she owes me, for I prevented you from disfiguring her, La Chouette, and saved her from being drowned at Bras Rouge's; but if, after having sworn not to speak, she dares to do so, we will attack the farm at Bouqueval with fire and blood!' Then, addressing me, the Schoolmaster added,'Decide, then: take the oath I demand of you, and you shall get off for three months in prison; if not, I abandon you to La Chouette, who will take you to Bras Rouge's, where you will be drowned, and we will set Bouqueval farm on fire. So, come, decide. I know, if you take the oath, you will keep it.'"
"And you did swear?"
"Alas, yes, madame! I was so fearful they would do my protectors at the farm an injury, and then I so much dreaded being drowned by La Chouette in a cellar, it seemed so frightful to me; another death would have seemed to me less horrid, and, perhaps, I should not have tried to escape it."
"What a dreadful idea at your age!" said Madame d'Harville, looking at La Goualeuse with surprise. "When you have left this place, and have been restored to your benefactors, shall you not be very happy? Has not your repentance effaced the past?"
"Can the past ever be effaced? Can the past ever be forgotten? Can repentance kill memory, madame?" exclaimed Fleur-de-Marie, in a tone so despairing that Clémence shuddered.
"But all faults are retrieved, unhappy girl!"