"You will beat him again, and I shall hear him," said Jeanne Marie, weeping. "I hear every thing now that goes on in the Temple, and whenever you strike, the youngster, I feel every blow in my brain, and that gives me pain enough to drive me to distraction."
"I promise you, Jeanne Marie, that I will not strike him, and will not trouble myself about him at all. He can play with his ball.— Halloa, Capet! Come! We are going up on the platform. Take your ball and any thing else you like, for you shall play to-day and have a good time."
The child stole out of his room with his ball, not looking particularly delighted, and the prospect of "playing" did not give wings to his steps, nor call a smile to his swollen face. He left the room noiselessly, and Simon slammed the doors violently behind him.
"And now we are alone," said Doctor Naudin, "and you can tell me about your sickness, and about every thing that troubles you."
"Ah, doctor, I do not dare to," she whispered. "I am overpowered by a dreadful fear, and I think you will betray me, and bring my husband and myself to the scaffold."
"I am no betrayer," answered the doctor, solemnly. "The physician is like a priest; he receives the secrets and disclosures of his patients, and lets not a word of them pass his lips. But, in order that you may take courage, I will first prove to you that I put confidence in you, by showing you that I understand you. I will tell you what the disease is that you are suffering from, and also its locality. Jeanne Marie Simon, you are enduring that with which no pains of the body can be compared. Your sickness has its seat in the conscience, and its name is remorse and despair."
Jeanne Marie uttered a heart-rending cry, and sprang like an exasperated tiger from her bed. "You lie!" she said, seizing the doctor's arm with both hands; "that is a foul, damnable calumny, that you have thought out merely to bring me under the axe. I have nothing to be sorry for, and my conscience fills me with no reproaches."
"And yet it is gnawing into you with iron teeth, which have been heated blood-red in the fires of hell," said the doctor, with a compassionate look at the pale, quivering face of the woman. "Do not raise any quarrel, but quietly listen to me. We have an hour's time to talk together, and we want to use it. But let us speak softly, softly, together; for what we have to say to each other the deaf walls themselves ought not to hear."
Simon had not returned from the platform with the boy, when Doctor Naudin ended his long and earnest conversation, and prepared to leave his patient, who was now quietly lying in her bed.
"You know every thing now that you have to do," he said, extending his hand to her. "You can reckon on me as I reckon on you, and we will both go bravely and cheerfully on. It is a noble work that we have undertaken, and if it succeeds your heart will be light again, and God will forgive you your sins, for two martyrs will stand and plead in your behalf at the throne of God! Now, do every thing exactly as I have told you, and speak with your husband to-night, but not sooner, that you may be safe, and for fear that in his first panic his face would betray him."