As he conducted his visitor to the door, the latter came face to face with a woman in servant’s dress, who was just about to ring the bell. This woman was, apparently, known to Dutocq, for he said to her:—
“Ha ha! little woman; so we feel the necessity of consulting a barrister? You are right; at the family council very serious matters were brought up against you.”
“Thank God, I fear no one. I can walk with my head up,” said the person thus addressed.
“So much the better for you,” replied the clerk of the justice-of-peace; “but you will probably be summoned before the judge who examines the affair. At any rate, you are in good hands here; and my friend la Peyrade will advise you for the best.”
“Monsieur is mistaken,” said the woman; “it is not for what he thinks that I have come to consult a lawyer.”
“Well, be careful what you say and do, my dear woman, for I warn you you are going to be finely picked to pieces. The relations are furious against you, and you can’t get the idea out of their heads that you have got a great deal of money.”
While speaking thus, Dutocq kept his eye on Theodose, who bore the look uneasily, and requested his client to enter.
Here follows a scene which had taken place the previous afternoon between this woman and la Peyrade.
La Peyrade, we may remember, was in the habit of going to early mass at his parish church. For some little time he had felt himself the object of a singular attention which he could not explain on the part of the woman whom we have just seen entering his office, who daily attended the church at, as Dorine says, his “special hour.” Could it be for love? That explanation was scarcely compatible with the maturity and the saintly, beatific air of this person, who, beneath a plain cap, called “a la Janseniste,” by which fervent female souls of that sect were recognized, affected, like a nun, to hide her hair. On the other hand, the rest of her clothing was of a neatness that was almost dainty, and the gold cross at her throat, suspended by a black velvet ribbon, excluded the idea of humble and hesitating mendicity.
The morning of the day on which the dinner at the Rocher de Cancale was to take place, la Peyrade, weary of a performance which had ended by preoccupying his mind, went up to the woman and asked her pointblank if she had any request to make of him.