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I tell you that this business is not going to end thus, that we must be avenged. On whom, on what? Ah! that I cannot tell; but avenged we must and shall be for such misfortune, in order that we may yet have courage to live on!" Doctor Dalichamp, who had been watching the scene with intense interest, cautioned Henriette by signal to make no reply.
Sinking wearily upon a chair she told how, when the 7th corps came into Raucourt, she had fled for shelter to the house of her godfather, Doctor Dalichamp, hoping that Father Fouchard would think to come and take her up before he left the town.
And now the reason of the long silence was made clear to them: the letter that he had addressed from Paris to Doctor Dalichamp on the 18th, the very day that ended railway communication with Havre, had gone astray and had only reached them at last by a miracle, after a long and circuitous journey. "Ah, the dear boy!" said Jean, radiant with delight. "Read it to me, quick!"
He had heard it reported that General Faidherbe was about to take the field, and had definitely appointed the next ensuing Sunday as the day of his departure, when news reached him of the battle of Pont-Noyelle, that drawn battle which came so near being a victory for the French. It was Dr. Dalichamp again in this instance who offered the services of his gig and himself as driver to Bouillon.
She, a pretty, meek-eyed, brown-haired girl, had in early childhood lost her mother, an operative in one of the factories of Raucourt, and Doctor Dalichamp, her godfather, a worthy man who was greatly addicted to adopting the wretched little beings whom he ushered into the world, had conceived the idea of placing her in Father Fouchard's family as small maid of all work.
Everyone was running, pushing, and crowding. Then he became alarmed lest they should take his horse and wagon from him, and drove off, leaving his servant, who was just then making some purchases in the town. "Oh, Silvine will come back all right," he concluded in his tranquil voice. "She must have taken shelter with Doctor Dalichamp, her godfather.
Intelligence of the war only reached them a long time after the occurrence of events, the few newspapers that Doctor Dalichamp still continued to supply them with were often a week old by the time they reached their hands.
But in the papers that Doctor Dalichamp brought them Bazaine was still the great man and the gallant soldier, to whom France looked for her salvation.
Chancing to meet with Doctor Dalichamp of Raucourt, with whom she was acquainted, her conversation with him had been the means of bringing her to take up her abode with Father Fouchard, in whose house she had a little bedroom, in order to devote herself entirely to the care of the sufferers in the neighboring hospital. That alone, she said, would serve to quiet her bitter memories.
His sister, with many tears, made up her mind that he must be allowed to have his way, and Doctor Dalichamp, when he came to make his morning visit, promised to do what he could to facilitate the young man's escape by turning over to him the papers of a hospital attendant who had died recently at Raucourt.
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