Volume II Part 44 (1/2)
”Why, I am no longer the same since your arrival; no, I have no more courage, strength, or hardihood.”
Interrupting herself, she pushed up the sleeve of her dress and showed to La Goualeuse her strong white arm, pointing out to her, p.r.i.c.ked in with indelible ink, a poniard half plunged in a red heart; over this emblem were these words:
”Death to Dastards! MARTIAL. For life!”
”Do you see that?” cried La Louve.
”Yes; it makes me afraid,” said La Goualeuse, turning away her head.
”When Martial, my lover, wrote this with a red-hot needle, he thought me brave; if he knew my conduct for three days past, he would drive his knife in my body, as this poniard is planted in this heart; and he would be right, for be has written there '_Death to Dastards_'
and I am one.”
”What have you done cowardly?”
”Everything.”
”Do you regret what you have done just now?”
”Yes!”
”I do not believe you.”
”I tell you that I regret it, for it is another proof of the power you have over us all. Did you not hear what Mont Saint Jean said when she was on her knees to thank you?”
”What did she say?”
”She said, in speaking of us, that with nothing you turn us from evil to good. I could have strangled her when she said that, for, to our shame, it is true. Yes, in a moment you change us from black to white: we listen to you, we give way to our impulses, and we are your dupes.”
”My dupe--because you have generously a.s.sisted this poor woman!”
”It shall not be said,” cried La Louve, ”that a little girl like you can trample me under foot.”
”I! how?”
”Do I know how? You come here--you commence by offending me.”
”Offend you?”
”Yes: you ask who wants your bread: I answer first 'I.' Mont Saint Jean only asks for it afterward and you give her the preference.
Furious at this, I rush on you with my knife raised.”
”And I said to you, 'Kill me if you will, but do not make me suffer too much,'” answered La Goualeuse; ”that was all.”
”That was all! Yes, that was all! and yet, these words alone caused the knife to fall from my hands; made me ask pardon from you, who had offended me. Is it natural? Why, when I return to my senses, I pity myself. And the night when you arrived here, when you knelt to say your prayers, why, instead of laughing at you and arousing the whole company--why was it that I said, 'Leave her alone; she prays because she has the right to do so.' And, the next morning, why were we all ashamed to dress before you?”
”I do not know, La Louve.”
”Really!” said this violent creature, with irony, ”you don't know! It is, doubtless, as we have told you sometimes in jest, that you are of another family than ours. Perhaps you believe that?”