“Yes, madame, we were amusing ourselves,” said the child, exhausted by her display of strength, and now breaking down as though she were about to faint.
“You hear what she says, madame,” said Catherine, boldly, giving the countess one of those looks which women give each other like dagger thrusts.
She took her brother’s arm, and the pair walked off, not mistaking the opinion they left behind them in the minds of the three persons who had interrupted the scene. Nicolas twice looked back, and twice encountered Blondet’s gaze. The journalist continued to watch the tall scoundrel, who was broad in the shoulders, healthy and vigorous in complexion, with black hair curling tightly, and whose rather soft face showed upon its lips and around the mouth certain lines which reveal the peculiar cruelty that characterizes sluggards and voluptuaries. Catherine swung her petticoat, striped blue and white, with an air of insolent coquetry.
“Cain and his wife!” said Blondet to the abbe.
“You are nearer the truth than you know,” replied the priest.
“Ah! Monsieur le cure, what will they do to me?” said La Pechina, when the brother and sister were out of sight.
The countess, as white as her handkerchief, was so overcome that she heard neither Blondet nor the abbe nor La Pechina.
“It is enough to drive one from this terrestrial paradise,” she said at last. “But the first thing of all is to save that child from their claws.”
“You are right,” said Blondet in a low voice. “That child is a poem, a living poem.”
Just then the Montenegrin girl was in a state where soul and body smoke, as it were, after the conflagration of an anger which has driven all forces, physical and intellectual, to their utmost tension. It is an unspeakable and supreme splendor, which reveals itself only under the pressure of some frenzy, be it resistance or victory, love or martyrdom. She had left home in a dress with alternate lines of brown and yellow, and a collarette which she pleated herself by rising before daylight; and she had not yet noticed the condition of her gown soiled by her struggle on the grass, and her collar torn in Catherine’s grasp. Feeling her hair hanging loose, she looked about her for a comb. At this moment Michaud, also attracted by the screams, came upon the scene. Seeing her god, La Pechina recovered her full strength. “Monsieur Michaud,” she cried, “he did not even touch me!”