“Nay, that is true, Mère Malheur; the fairest women in the world are ever the worst! fair and false! fair and false! they are always so. Not one better than another. Satan's mark is upon all of us!” La Corriveau looked an incarnation of Hecate as she uttered this calumny upon her sex.
“Ay, I have his mark on my knee, Dame Dodier,” replied the crone. “See here! It was pricked once in the high court of Arras, but the fool judge decided that it was a mole, and not a witch-mark! I escaped a red gown that time, however. I laughed at his stupidity, and bewitched him for it in earnest. I was young and pretty then! He died in a year, and Satan sat on his grave in the shape of a black cat until his friends set a cross over it. I like to be a woman, I do, it is so easy to be wicked, and so nice! I always tell the girls that, and they give me twice as much as if I had told them to be good and nice, as they call it! Pshaw! Nice! If only men knew us as we really are!”
“Well, I do not like women, Mère Malheur,” replied La Corriveau; “they sneer at you and me and call us witch and sorceress, and they will lie, steal, kill, and do worse themselves for the sake of one man to-day, and cast him off for sake of another to-morrow! Wise Solomon found only one good woman in a thousand; the wisest man now finds not one in a worldful! It were better all of us were dead, Mère Malheur; but pour me out a glass of wine, for I am tired of tramping in the dark to the house of that gay lady I told you of.”
Mère Malheur poured out a glass of choice Beaume from a dame-jeanne which she had received from a roguish sailor, who had stolen it from his ship.
“But you have not told me who she is, Dame Dodier,” replied Mère Malheur, refilling the glass of La Corriveau.
“Nor will I yet. She is fit to be your mistress and mine, whoever she is; but I shall not go again to see her.”
And La Corriveau did not again visit the house of Angélique. She had received from her precise information respecting the movements of the Intendant. He had gone to the Trois Rivières on urgent affairs, and might be absent for a week.
Angélique had received from Varin, in reply to her eager question for news, a short, falsified account of the proceedings in the Council relative to Caroline and of Bigot's indignant denial of all knowledge of her.
Varin, as a member of the Council, dared not reveal the truth, but would give his familiars half-hints, or tell to others elaborate lies, when pressed for information. He did not, in this case, even hint at the fact that a search was to be made for Caroline. Had he done so, Angélique would herself have given secret information to the Governor to order the search of Beaumanoir, and thus got her rival out of the way without trouble, risk, or crime.
But it was not to be. The little word that would have set her active spirit on fire to aid in the search for Caroline was not spoken, and her thoughts remained immovably fixed upon her death.