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Updated: June 23, 2025
An hour later, when the black maid returned from an errand, she found her mistress at the head of the stairs near the Englishman's door, talking in suppressed tones to Camille Ducour, who, hat in hand, seemed to have just dropped in and to be just going out again. He went, and Attalie said to her maid that he was "so good" and was going to come and sit up all night with the sick man.
To impute moral sublimity to a white man and a quadroon woman at one and the same time and in one and the same affair was something beyond the powers of Camille's small soul. But he gave Attalie, on the instant, full credit, over credit it may be, and felt a momentary thrill of spiritual contagion that he had scarcely known before in all his days.
Camille glided to the woman's side and laid a gentle yet commanding touch upon her. "Come, there is not a moment to lose." "What do you want?" asked Attalie. She neither rose nor turned her head, nor even let go the dead man's hand. "I must make haste to fulfill the oft-repeated request of my friend here." "Your friend!"
Attalie, grief-worn, distressed, visibly agitated, moved close to the bedside. Her sad figure suited the place with poetic fitness. The notary stood by the chair at the desk. The three witnesses edged along the wall where the curtained windows glimmered, took seats there, and held their hats in their hands. All looked at one object.
Attalie hung over him for an instant, and then turning quickly to her maid, who was lighting the candles for the notary and placing them so they should not shine into the eyes of the man in bed, said: "His feet another hot-water bottle." The maid went to get it.
Camille mentioned the Englishman approvingly to three other friends of Attalie, when, with what they thought was adroitness, they turned conversation upon her pecuniary welfare. They were Jean d'Eau, a slumberous butcher; Richard Reau, an embarrassed baker; and one Ecswyzee, an illiterate but prosperous candlestick-maker.
Out of many a danger of their own making had he safely drawn them, all unseen by, though not unknown to, the legitimate guild of judges, lawyers, and notaries out of whose professional garbage barrel he enjoyed a sort of stray dog's privilege of feeding. His meetings with Attalie Brouillard were almost always on the street and by accident.
The butcher turned and smiled concurrence; but Attalie, though she again said "yass," only added good-day, and the maid led them and the notary down stairs and let them out.
They not only looked amused, but plainly could have looked more so but for the restraints of rank and station. Attalie was quite as visibly frightened. Camille's knees weakened and a sickness came over him as he glanced around the group.
He never failed, when he could detain her no longer, to bid her feel free to call on him whenever she found herself in dire need of a wise friend's counsel. There was always in his words the hint that, though he never had quite enough cash for one, he never failed of knowledge and wisdom enough for two. And the gentle Attalie believed both clauses of his avowal.
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