It struck midnight; but the poor people in the little parlor in the
Hotel du Louvre hardly thought of sleep. How could they have become
aware of the flight of time, as long as all their faculties were bent
upon the immense interests that were at stake? On the struggle which
they were about to undertake depended Count Ville-Handry’s life and
honor, and the happiness and whole future life of Daniel and Henrietta.
And Papa Ravinet and his sister had said,--“As for us, even more than
that depends upon it.” The old dealer, therefore, drew up an easy-
chair, sat down, and began in a somewhat husky voice,--
“The Countess Sarah is not Sarah Brandon, and is not an American. Her
real name, by which she was known up to her sixteenth year, is Ernestine
Bergot; and she was born in Paris, in the suburb of Saint Martin, just
on the line of the corporation. To tell you in detail what the first
years of Sarah were like would be difficult indeed. There are things of
that kind which do not bear being mentioned. Her childhood might be her
excuse, if she could be excused at all.
“Her mother was one of those unfortunate women of whom Paris devours
every year several thousands; who come from the provinces in wooden
shoes, and are seen, six months later, dressed in all the fashion; and
who live a short, gay life, which invariably ends in the hospital.
“Her mother was neither better nor worse than the rest. When her
daughter came, she had neither the sense to part with her, nor the
courage--perhaps (who knows?) she had not the means--to mend her ways.
Thus the little one grew up by God’s mercy, but at the Devil’s bidding,
living by chance, now stuffed with sweet things, and now half-killed by
blows, fed by the charity of neighbors, while her mother remained for
weeks absent from her lodgings.
“Four years old, she wandered through the neighborhood dressed in
fragments of silk or velvet, with a faded ribbon in her hair, but
with bare feet in her torn shoes, hoarse, and shivering with severe
colds,--very much after the fashion of lost dogs, who rove around
open-air cooking-shops,--and looking in the gutters for cents with which
to buy fried potatoes or spoilt fruit.
“At a later time she extended the circle of her excursions, and wandered
all over Paris, in company of other children like herself, stopping
on the boulevards, before the brilliant shops or performing jugglers,
trying to learn how to steal from open stalls, and at night asking in a
plaintive voice for alms in behalf of her poor sick father. When twelve
years old she was as thin as a plank, and as green as a June apple, with
sharp elbows and long red hands. But she had beautiful light hair, teeth
like a young dog’s, and large, impudent eyes. Merely upon seeing her go
along, her head high with an air of saucy indifference, coquettish under
her rags, and walking with elastic steps, you would have guessed in
her the young Parisian girl, the sister of the poor ‘gamin,’ a thousand
times more wicked than her brothers, and far more dangerous to society.
She was as depraved as the worst of sinners, fearing neither God nor the
Devil, nor man, nor anything.
“However, she did fear the police.
“For from them she derived the only notions of morality she ever
possessed; otherwise, it would have been love’s labor lost to talk to
her of virtue or of duty. These words would have conveyed no meaning
to her imagination; she knew no more about them than about the abstract
ideas which they represent.
“One day, however, her mother, who had virtually made a servant of her,
had a praiseworthy inspiration. Finding that she had some money, she
dressed her anew from head to foot, bought her a kind of outfit, and
bound her as an apprentice to a dressmaker.
“But it came too late.
“Every kind of restraint was naturally intolerable to such a vagabond
nature. The order and the regularity of the house in which she lived
were a horror to her. To sit still all day long, a needle in her hand,
appeared to her harder than death itself. The very comforts around her
embarrassed her, and she felt as a savage would feel in tight boots. At
the end of the first week, therefore, she ran away from the dressmaker,
stealing a hundred francs. As long as these lasted, she roved over
Paris. When they were spent, and she was hungry, she came back to her
mother.
“But her mother had moved away, and no one knew what had become of her.
She was inquired after, but never found. Any other person would have
been in despair. Not she. The same day she entered as waiter in a
cheap coffee-house. Turned out there, she found employment in a low
restaurant, where she had to wash up the dishes and plates. Sent away
here, also, she became a servant in two or three other places of still
lower character; then, at last, utterly disgusted, she determined to do
nothing at all.
“She was sinking into the gutter, she was on the point of being lost
before she had reached womanhood, like fruit which spoils before it is
ripe, when a man turned up who was fated to arm her for life’s Struggle,
and to change the vulgar thief into the accomplished monster of
perversity whom you know.”