"What you say is frightful!" said the count.
"For him who knows how to read it, the human body is a book where one learns to save the life of the sick," said Dr. Griffon, stoically.
"However, you do good," said Saint Remy, bitterly; "that is the important thing. What matters the cause, as long as the benefit exists! Poor child, the more I look at her, the more she interests me."
"And she deserves it, sir," cried La Louve, pa.s.sionately, drawing near.
"You know her?" said the count.
"Know her, sir? To her I owe the happiness of my life; in saving her I have not done as much for her as she has done for me."
"And who is she?" asked the count.
"An angel, sir; all that is good in the world. Yes, although she is dressed as a peasant girl there is not a grand lady who can talk as well as she can, with her soft little voice, just like music. She is a n.o.ble girl, and courageous and good."
"How did she fall in the water?"
"I do not know, sir."
"She is not a peasant girl, then?" asked the count.
"A peasant girl! Look at her small white hands, sir!"
"It is true," said Saint Remy. "What a singular mystery! But her name, her family?"
"Come," said the doctor, interrupting the conversation, "the subject must be carried to the boat."
Half an hour afterward, Fleur-de-Marie, who had not yet recovered her senses, was taken to the physician"s house, placed in a warm bed, and maternally watched by the gardener"s wife, a.s.sisted by La Louve. The doctor promised Saint Remy, who was more and more interested in La Goualeuse, to return the same evening to visit her.
Martial went to Paris with Francois, and Amandine, La Louve not being willing to leave Fleur-de-Marie until she was out of danger.
The island remained deserted. We shall soon meet with its wretched occupants at Bras-Rouge"s, where they had agreed to meet La Chouette, to murder the diamond dealer.
In the meanwhile we would conduct the reader to the appointment that Tom, the brother of the Countess Macgregor, had made with the horrible old woman, the Schoolmaster"s accomplice.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI.
THE LIKENESS.
Thomas Seyton walked impatiently up and down on one of the boulevards, near the Observatory, till he saw La Chouette appear.
The old wretch had on a white cap, and was wrapped up in a large red plaid shawl; the point of a very sharp dagger stuck through the bottom of the straw basket which she carried on her arm; but Tom did not perceive it.
"Three o"clock is striking from the Luxembourg," said the old woman.
"I am punctual, I think?"
"Come," answered Seyton; and walking before her, he crossed some waste ground, entered a deserted street situated near the Rue Ca.s.sini, stopped about the middle of the pa.s.sage, where it was obstructed by a turnstile, opened a small gate, made a sign for La Chouette to follow him, and, after having taken a few steps in an alley shaded with large trees, said, "Wait here," and disappeared.
"I hope he won"t make me lose too much time," said La Chouette; "I must be at Bras-Rouge"s at five, to settle the broker. Ah! speaking of that, my scoundrelly needle has his nose out of the window," added the old woman, seeing the point of the dagger sticking through the basket.
"So much for not having put on his cap." And taking it from the basket, she placed it in such a manner that it was completely concealed.
"It is a tool of my man"s," said she. "Did he not ask me for it to kill the rats, which come and laugh at him in his cellar? Poor beasts!--not for him. They have only the old blind man to divert them, and keep them company! The least they can do is to nibble him a little. Hence I don"t wish him to do any harm to the small deer, and I keep the tickler. Besides, I shall soon want it for the broker, perhaps. Thirty thousand francs" worth of diamonds--a treasure for each of us! A good day"s work; not like the other day. That fool of a notary whom I wanted to pluck--I did threaten him, if he would not give me money, to inform that it was his housekeeper who gave me La Goualeuse, through Tournemine, when she was quite small; but nothing frightens him. He called me an old liar, and turned me out of doors.
Good, good--I will have a letter written to those people at the farm, where Pegriotte was sent, and inform them it was the notary who abandoned her. They know, perhaps, her family, and when she leaves Saint Lazare, it will be hot work for this hound of a Ferrand. But some one comes--a little pale lady whom I have seen before," added La Chouette, seeing Sarah appear at the other end of the alley. "Some more business to be done; it must be on account of this little lady that we carried La Goualeuse away from the farm. If she pays well for anything new, I"m on it, safe!"
On approaching La Chouette, whom she saw for the first time since a previous meeting, the countenance of Sarah expressed that disdain which people of a certain cla.s.s feel when they are obliged to come in contact with wretches whom they use as instruments or accomplices.
Seyton, who until now had actively a.s.sisted the criminal machinations of his sister, considering them useless, had refused to continue this miserable game, consenting, nevertheless, to grant his sister, for the last time, an interview with La Chouette, without wishing to take part in any new schemes.
Having been unable to bring Rudolph back to her by breaking the ties which she thought dear to him, the countess hoped, as we have said, to render him the dupe of an infamous trick, the success of which might realize the dream of this opinionated, ambitious, and cruel woman. It was in contemplation to persuade Rudolph that the daughter, whom he had supposed dead, was alive, and to subst.i.tute some orphan in the place of his daughter.
The reader knows that Jacques Ferrand, having formally refused to enter into this plot, in spite of Sarah"s threats, had resolved to make away with Fleur-de-Marie, as much from dread of the revelations of La Chouette, as from fear of the countess. But she had not renounced her designs, for she was almost certain of corrupting or intimidating the notary, when she had secured a girl capable of playing the part designed for her.
After a moment"s silence, Sarah said to La Chouette, "Are you adroit, discreet, and resolute?"
"Adroit as a monkey, resolute as a dog, dumb as a fish; there"s La Chouette, just as the devil has made her, ready to serve you if she is capable--and she is rather," answered the hag in a lively manner. "I hope we have famously decoyed the young country girl, who is safely fastened up in Saint Lazare for two good months."
"The question is no longer of her, but of other things."
"As you wish, my little lady. As long as there is money at the end of what you are about to propose, we shall be like two fingers of a hand."
Sarah could not suppress a movement of disgust. "You must know," said she, "some common people--some unfortunate family."
"There are more of them than millionaires; plenty to pick from; there is a rich misery in Paris."
"You must find for me a young orphan girl, one who lost her parents very early. She must be of an agreeable face, of a sweet temper, and not more than seventeen."
La Chouette looked at Sarah with astonishment.
"Such an orphan cannot be difficult to find," resumed the countess; "there are so many foundlings."
"My little lady, have you not forgotten La Goualeuse? Just what you want."
"Whom do you mean by La Goualeuse?"
"The young person whom we carried off from Bouqueval."
"I tell you, we have nothing to do with her!"
"But listen to me, then; and above all, reward me with good advice; you wish an orphan, as gentle as a lamb, beautiful as day, and not seventeen."
"Without doubt."
"Well, then, take La Goualeuse when she comes out of Saint Lazare; just what you want--as if made to order; for she was only six years old when Jacques Ferrand (about ten years ago) gave her to me, with a thousand francs, to get rid of her. It was a man named Tournemine, now in the galleys at Rochefort, who brought her to me, saying, that she was doubtless a child they wanted to get rid of, or pa.s.s for dead."
"Jacques Ferrand, say you!" cried Sarah, in a voice so changed that La Chouette stepped back with alarm. "The notary, Jacques Ferrand,"