Self-preservation, and the piteous hope that the house fronts might give her some clue to her bearings, caused the girl to stagger from the centre of the square to the sides. Along one of them she picked her way, moaning for help and having not even a stick to guide her. Slowly, painfully she groped around the Place until unwittingly she approached the railing or wall which served as a guard to the steep bank that descended to the river.
Along this she felt her way until suddenly her hands met the empty air. What, now? Should she return as she had come? 17 No, she thought; the flagging beneath her feet was heavy and substantial: ’twas probably the intersection of another street, and a few steps would bring her to house fronts again.
Louise walked down the flags and stepped into nothingness––thirty feet sheer precipice into the river Seine!
In the instant horror of falling to death off the stone pier, she found herself saved by being clasped in a man’s arms.
“Great heavens!” this individual exclaimed as he bore her to the centre of the square. “What were you going to do?”
“Nothing––nothing––what was it?” cried Louise incoherently, realizing only that she had been pulled back from death’s door.
“Another moment,” said the man in horror-stricken accents, “and you would have been drowned in the Seine! I leaped up the steps and just managed to catch you. Lucky that five minutes ago I had to go down to the river to fill my water can. You––”
The tones of the voice, which struck Louise as young-old in its timbre, were soft and kind with a refined and even plaintive 18 quality albeit not cultured. Here was a good soul and a friend, she sensed at once. But could she suddenly have won her sight, Louise would have been astonished at the actual vision.
Pale narrow spirituelle features, lit by beautiful eyes and surmounted by a wealth of straight black hair; a form haggard, weazened by deformity, yet evidencing muscular toil; delicate hands and feet that like the features bespoke the poesy of soul within mis-shapen shell,––the hunchback scissors-grinder Pierre Frochard presented a remarkable aspect which, once seen, no one could ever forget!
Wonder and awe were writ on the pale face as he looked at the lovely angel he had rescued. Pierre shuddered again over the escape. Better that he should have suffered myriad deaths than that a hair of that lovely head were injured. As for himself––poor object of the world’s scorn and his family’s revilings––was he worthy e’en to kiss the hem of her garment?