When Martial's mistress had reached that point of the isle from which both sides of the Seine were distinguishable, Nicholas, his mother, and Calabash had quitted the place, certain of the accomplishment of their double crime; they then repaired, in all haste, to the house of Bras-Rouge.
At this moment a man who, hidden in one of the recesses of the river concealed by the lime-kiln, had, without being seen himself, witnessed the whole progress of this horrible scene, also disappeared; believing, as well as the guilty perpetrators, that the fell deed had been fully achieved. This man was Jacques Ferrand.
One of Nicholas's boats was rocking to and fro, moored to a stake on the river's bank, just by where Madame Séraphin and La Goualeuse had embarked.
Scarcely had Jacques Ferrand quitted the lime-kiln to return to Paris than M. de Saint-Remy and Doctor Griffon hastily crossed the bridge of Asnières, for the purpose of reaching the isle; which they contemplated doing by means of Nicholas's boat, which they had discerned from afar.
To the extreme astonishment of La Louve, when she arrived at the house in the Isle du Ravageur, she found the door shut and fastened. Placing the still inanimate form of Fleur-de-Marie beneath the porch, she more closely examined the dwelling. The window of Martial's chamber was well known to her; what was her surprise to find the shutters belonging to it closed, and sheets of tin nailed over them, strongly secured from without by two bars of iron!
Suspecting a part of the cause of this, La Louve, in a loud, hoarse voice of mingled fury and deep tenderness, screamed out as loudly as she could:
"Martial! My man!"
No answer was returned.
Terrified at this silence, La Louve began pacing round and round the house like a wild beast who scents the spot whither her mate has been entrapped, and with deep roars and savage growls demands admittance to him.
Still pursuing her agitated search, La Louve kept shouting from time to time, "My man! Are you there, my man?" And in her desperate fury she shook and rattled the bars of the kitchen windows, beat against the walls, and knocked long and loudly at the door. All at once a dull, indistinct noise was heard from withinside the house. Eagerly and attentively La Louve listened; the noise, however, ceased.