Pierre looked yet again. The angelic little creature was blind! Wide-open yet sightless orbs whereof the cataracts blackened the view of all Life’s perils, as they 19 had of the imminent river. A surge of self-abnegating, celestial love, mingled with divine pity, filled the hunchback’s soul.
Tenderly he inquired about her misfortune, and she told him the sad tale of the journey and Henriette’s kidnapping.... Their talk was broken in upon by the entry of the hag Mere Frochard and her elder son.
Alas, poor Louise! In finding a friend thou hast likewise found the bitter bread of the stranger and the slavery of the Frochard clan! The wretched hunchback is himself in thrall. Little dreams he the woe that shall attend ye both, the while Henriette is the victim of far mightier pomps and powers.
Though Henriette shall not know thy fate for many a day, though she shall search long and frantically and not meet the beloved until within the shadow of the guillotine, it may give the reader what comfort it will that the blind sister still lives––a lost mite in the vast ocean of Paris!
CHAPTER IV
THE FETE OF BEL-AIR
Henrietta had swooned in the vehicle which was being rapidly driven into open country.
Gradually color came back into wan cheeks. The blue orbs and Cupid lips fluttered and half opened; the dazed little brain tried vainly to sense what had happened.