”‘Yes,’ said the old man, ‘for you seem honest and trustworthy. It came from some people living in the first street round the corner there,’ and he pointed through the window, ‘the first street to the right. I do not know their name, but they have been there some time, and are, no doubt, as you say, in great trouble. I have several things of theirs—I mark them all with the name of the street and the number.’
”‘What is it?’ asked Pierre breathlessly.
”‘Nine, number nine,’ said the man, and scarcely waiting to thank him, young Germain, in a bewilderment of feeling, such as he had never known, rushed out of the shop and in the direction pointed out.
“It was a poor place, and it was not till he had knocked at several doors, and repeated several times the description of what he wanted—a lady—a citizeness, he was obliged to say—with her young daughter, a young girl with fair hair and blue eyes, that he was at last directed to the right rooms. Up at the very top of the house they were—rooms that would be dreary even to those who had never known any better: what must they have been to the Countess and her child? Pierre’s tremulous knock was twice repeated before it was responded to. Then the door was opened, hesitatingly and unwillingly, by a boy. At first Pierre’s heart sank with new disappointment; then, looking again, fresh perplexity seized him—it was the boy, though still paler and thinner, the same boy he had met in the crowd that first day in Paris. And as he stared at him a new idea struck him like a revelation.
”‘I am not mistaken,’ he said suddenly; ‘they must be here. You are—are you not?—you are Edmond de Sarinet?’ though, strangely enough, through all his search, the remembrance of his childish enemy, the thought of him as perhaps with his aunt and cousin, had never before occurred to him.
“The boy drew himself up haughtily; thin and miserable as he looked, there would have been something ludicrous in his manner had it not been so piteous.
”‘And what if I am?’ he was beginning, when he was suddenly pushed aside. A girl, as tall as he, nearly, and far stronger and healthier in appearance, though her face was pale, and her eyes swollen with much crying, her flaxen hair tossed back over her shoulders, as if she had not had the time or the heart to arrange it, came flying forward, and in another instant her arms were round Pierre’s neck, her fair face pressed against his sturdy shoulders as he bent to meet her.
”‘Oh, Pierrot! my own good Pierrot!’ she cried, though her voice shook with sobs, ‘you have come at last. I knew your voice at once. Oh, Pierrot, pity your poor Edmée!—Mamma is dying! But come, come,’ she went on, dragging him forward before he had time to utter a word of the sorrow and sympathy which were choking him; ‘she will know you still—she will speak to you. It will make the leaving me less hard; she has prayed so, that God has answered at last. Come, Pierre, and comfort her.’
“And before he could take in that he had really found them, feeling as if he were dreaming, Pierre Germain was standing in a small and poorly-furnished room, where the evident efforts to make it as comfortable as possible but made its bareness more touching—standing beside a bed, on which, whiter than the pillows that supported her, lay his dearly-loved lady, the sweet and gentle Countess of Valmont!
”‘That I should have found you thus!’ were the first words he uttered, while the tears ran down his sunburnt cheeks. ‘After my long search—why has it come too late?’