It was a sight that made those present tremble when they saw the old gray woman, a sublime spectre, standing beside her grandchild's pillow. Terror and vengeance wrote their fierce expressions in the wrinkles that lined her skin of yellow ivory; her forehead, half hidden by the straggling meshes of her gray hair, expressed a solemn anger. She read, with a power of intuition given to the aged when near their grave, Pierrette's whole life, on which her mind had dwelt throughout her journey. She divined the illness of her darling, and knew that she was threatened with death. Two big tears painfully rose in her wan gray eyes, from which her troubles had worn both lashes and eyebrows, two pearls of anguish, forming within them and giving them a dreadful brightness; then each tear swelled and rolled down the withered cheek, but did not wet it.
"They have killed her!" she said at last, clasping her hands.
She fell on her knees which struck sharp blows on the brick-laid floor, ****** a vow no doubt to Saint Anne d'Auray, the most powerful of the madonnas of Brittany.
"A doctor from Paris," she said to Brigaut. "Go and fetch one, Brigaut, go!"
She took him by the shoulder and gave him a despotic push to send him from the room.
"I was coming, my lad, when you wrote me; I am rich,--here, take this," she cried, recalling him, and unfastening as she spoke the strings that tied her short-gown. Then she drew a paper from her bosom in which were forty-two bank-bills, saying, "Take what is necessary, and bring back the greatest doctor in Paris."
"Keep those," said Frappier; "he can't change thousand franc notes now. I have money, and the diligence will be passing presently; he can certainly find a place on it. But before he goes we had better consult Doctor Martener; he will tell us the best physician in Paris. The diligence won't pass for over an hour,--we have time enough."
Brigaut woke up Monsieur Martener, and brought him at once. The doctor was not a little surprised to find Mademoiselle Lorrain at Frappier's.
Brigaut told him of the scene that had just taken place at the Rogrons'; but even so the doctor did not at first suspect the horror of it, nor the extent of the injury done. Martener gave the address of the celebrated Horace Bianchon, and Brigaut started for Paris by the diligence. Monsieur Martener then sat down and examined first the bruised and bloody hand which lay outside the bed.
"She could not have given these wounds herself," he said.
"No; the horrible woman to whom I had the misfortune to trust her was murdering her," said the grandmother. "My poor Pierrette was screaming 'Help! help! I'm dying,'--enough to touch the heart of an executioner."
"But why was it?" said the doctor, feeling Pierrette's pulse. "She is very ill," he added, examining her with a light. "She must have suffered terribly; I don't understand why she has not been properly cared for."
"I shall complain to the authorities," said the grandmother. "Those Rogrons asked me for my child in a letter, saying they had twelve thousand francs a year and would take care of her; had they the right to make her their servant and force her to do work for which she had not the strength?"
"They did not choose to see the most visible of all maladies to which young girls are liable. She needed the utmost care," cried Monsieur Martener.
Pierrette was awakened by the light which Madame Frappier was holding near her face, and by the horrible sufferings in her head caused by the reaction of her struggle.
"Ah! Monsieur Martener, I am very ill," she said in her pretty voice.
"Where is the pain, my little friend?" asked the doctor.
"Here," she said, touching her head above the left ear.
"There's an abscess," said the doctor, after feeling the head for a long time and questioning Pierrette on her sufferings. "You must tell us all, my child, so that we may know how to cure you. Why is your hand like this? You could not have given yourself that wound."
Pierrette related the struggle between herself and her cousin Sylvie.
"Make her talk," said the doctor to the grandmother, "and find out the whole truth. I will await the arrival of the doctor from Paris; and we will send for the surgeon in charge of the hospital here, and have a consultation. The case seems to me a very serious one. Meantime I will send you a quieting draught so that mademoiselle may sleep; she needs sleep."
Left alone with her granddaughter the old Breton woman exerted her influence over the child and made her tell all; she let her know that she had money enough now for all three, and promised that Brigaut should live with them. The poor girl admitted her martyrdom, not imagining the events to which her admissions would give rise. The monstrosity of two beings without affection and without conception of family life opened to the old woman a world of woe as far from her knowledge as the morals of savages may have seemed to the first discoverers who set foot in America.
The arrival of her grandmother, the certainty of living with her in comfort soothed Pierrette's mind as the sleeping draught soothed her body. The old woman watched her darling, kissing her forehead, hair, and hands, as the holy women of old kissed the hands of Jesus when they laid him in the tomb.
