Doctor Seron heard of these things from his friend, the herbalist of Compiègne, who came to warn him about Doctor Bernhardt and to give him the most alarming information concerning him. He was worse than an impostor, living a luxurious life, and pulling wool over people’s eyes; it was said he was a swindler.
Madame Seron, on hearing this, addressed a supreme appeal to her son-in-law, enlightening him on the danger he was running, but, alas! it was too late. Jean Louis, completely hypnotised by Doctor Bernhardt, following his researches with passion, not only received no salary, but he had thrown the money received from the sale of the house and what remained of his wife’s dot into Doctor Bernhardt’s crucible, which was like that of the philosopher’s stone.
I was born at the Hotel of The Three Monarchs. My father announced the happy event to my grandmother by this simple note: “Your grandchild, born on the 4th of October at five o’clock in the afternoon, is called Juliette.”
What! this granddaughter, so much dreamed of, so much desired, was there, at Verberie, not far off, and she could not run to embrace her, to take and hold her for an instant in her arms?
My grandmother did not cease weeping and my grandfather shed tears with her.
“Think, Pierre, of that little one in an inn, of Olympe, our daughter, in such a place, with, perhaps, only a partition separating her from some drunken brute making a noise. Oh! it will kill me.”
“And her husband far from her, and in his perpetual goings and comings not able to watch over our only child’s health or that of our granddaughter,” added Doctor Seron, “it is dreadful.” And, with hands clasped together, they sobbed. What was to be done?
They wrote again several times, but received only one answer as curt as it was short:
“The mother and child are well.”
A commercial traveller, a patient of my grandfather, had heard at Verberie that my father was a victim of a miserable fellow, who imposed upon him, making him work like a labourer, promising him everything under heaven, and spending every cent he possessed, and that my mother, still at Verberie, owed a large sum at the hotel and might at any moment, together with her daughter, be turned out of doors without resources.