He looked at her with curiosity and compassion. It was certainly she; the granddaughter of Jean Bérarde, the betrothed of Gros Louis; the same child that he himself had taken over the moonlit sea to her fragrant island. White as she was, and thin, and altered by evident suffering, she was still too young to be much changed. Her features were the same, though they were pallid and drawn, and in place of the brilliant colours born from the sea winds and the southerly suns, they had the dull pallor which comes from want of food and want of air. Her clothes were the same dark serge that she had worn at Bonaventure, but they were discoloured and ragged. Her hair had lost its lustre, and was rough and tangled; her hands were scarce more than bone; her bosom was scarce more than skin; all the lovely rounded contours and curves of a rich and well-nourished youth were gone. He saw that the guard had been right: she had no doubt fainted from hunger.
But how had she come adrift in Paris? she, the heiress of Bonaventure, so safe and so sheltered under the orange-boughs of her island?
Had that single drop of the wine of 'the world' which his wife had poured into her innocent breast been so developed in remembrance and solitude that its consuming fever had left her no peace until she had plunged into the furnace and sunk beneath its flames? Heavens! how easy it was to influence to evil, how hard to sway to any better thing!
He looked at her with a compassion so tender and solemn that it left no place in him for any other feeling. She had no sex for him; she was only one of the world's innumerable victims, swallowed up in the vast self-made shell which men call a city. To him, always surrounded by every luxury and comfort, there was something frightful in the thought that a young female thing could actually want bread in the very heart of crowded thoroughfares and human multitudes.
'The very wolves are better than men and women,' he thought. 'The wolves at least always suffer together, and make their hunger a bond of closer union.'
He did not touch her; he shrank as far away from her as the space of the hired vehicle allowed him to do. It seemed to him a sort of violation to gaze at her thus in her helplessness, her poverty, her unconsciousness. She was as sacred to him as though she had been dead.
When the cab passed before the great gilded gates of his own residence, and the night porter opened them with wonder, Othmar descended, and paused, hesitating for a moment. He was in doubt what it would be best for her that he should do. Then he lifted her out of the fiacre himself, and crossed the court, bearing her in his arms.
'Send for a doctor and awake some of the women,' he said to the concierge as he paused at the foot of the staircase.
The lights were burning low. All such of the household as remained in Paris were in bed or out; the only person up, beside the porter, was his own body-servant, who, hearing his master's step, came down the stairs to meet him. With a few words of explanation to this man Othmar, assisted by him, carried the girl into his own library, and laid her down on one of the broad leather couches. Then he took some cognac from a liqueur-case which was in one of the cabinets, and forced a few drops of it through her teeth.
In a few minutes the head women of the house, hastily roused, had hurried to his summons. He gave them a few directions, and left her to their care.