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As usual, when he called, she looked at him with anxious curiosity, thinking of Florentin. "It is not of him that I wish to speak to you to-day," he said, without pronouncing any name, which was unnecessary. "It is of Mademoiselle Phillis " "Do you find her ill?" Madame Cormier said, who thought only of misfortune. "Not at all. It is of her and of myself that I wish to speak. Do not be uneasy.
And yet when he returned home in the evening she told him that her mother was not well, and begged him to examine her. This examination proved that Madame Cormier was in her usual health; but she complained that her breath failed her during the day she had feared syncope. "If you are willing," Phillis said, "I will sleep near mamma. I am afraid of not hearing her at night, and she is suffering."
After a few words, Saniel explained that, having to pay a visit to the Batignolles, he would not come so near his former patient without calling to see her. While Madame Cormier told at great length how she felt, and also how she did not feel, Phillis looked at Saniel, uneasy to see his face so convulsed. Surely, something very serious had happened; his visit said this. But what?
This testimony does not say that the man who drew the curtains at a quarter past five was built in such a way that it is materially impossible to confound him with Florentin Cormier, because he was small or hunchbacked or bald, or dressed like a workman; while Florentin is tall, straight, with long hair and beard, and dressed like a gentleman.
"I know," he said, "that all the protestations I might make would have no effect at this moment; I therefore spare you them. But I have a favor to ask of you; it is to permit me to write to my mother and sister the news of my arrest they love me tenderly. Oh, you shall read my letter!" "You may, sir." After the departure of her son and the detective, Madame Cormier was prostrated. Her son!
Her anguish was so much the greater, because he certainly avoided looking at her. Why? She had done nothing, and could find nothing with which to reproach herself. At this moment the door opened, and a man still young, tall, with a curled beard, entered the room. "My son," Madame Cormier said. "My brother Florentin, of whom we have spoken so often," Phillis said. Florentin!
"You know," she said at last, "how I saw, accidentally, from this place" she pointed to one of the windows "the face of the assassin of my unfortunate tenant, Monsieur Caffie." "Mademoiselle Cormier has told me," he replied in a tone of ordinary conversation.
"This is an examination," Saniel said, "that a physician could not have conducted better, unless he questioned the patient; and had I been with you during this visit we should not have learned anything more. It appears certain that Madame Dammauville is in possession of her faculties, which renders her testimony invulnerable." Madame Cormier drew her daughter to her and kissed her passionately.
And it was at night, at a distance of twelve or fifteen metres, through a window, whose panes were obscured by the dust of papers and the mist, that this sick woman, whose eyes are affected, whose mind is weakened by suffering, was able, in a very short space of time, when she had no interest to imprint upon her memory what she saw, to grasp certain signs, that she recalled yesterday strongly enough to declare that the man who drew the curtains was not Florentin Cormier, against whom so many charges have accumulated from various sides, and who has only this testimony in his favor every sensible person could not but find it suspicious!"
"If you will accept a plate of soup, I have some of yesterday's bouillon, that Phillis did not find bad." But he did not accept, which hurt Madame Cormier. For a long time Saniel had been a sort of god to her, and since he had shown so much zeal regarding Florentin, the 'culte' was become more fervent. At last Phillis's step was heard. "What!
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