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Vainly the Countess de Linieres entreated for mercy. They dragged the girl downstairs. Here again she made a frantic appeal and wild effort to join her blind charge, who was being hurried away in the vise-like grip of La Frochard. "Oh, for Heaven's sake, have pity let me go to my sister, or I shall lose her again!"
She felt the impulse to protect and cherish was it the voice of Mother Love obscurely speaking? "Alas!" said Louise. "Blindness is not the worst of my misfortunes. La Frochard administered a terrible pinch that pulled Louise away, then "mothered" her cutely. "We are starving, my beautiful lady," she whined, "and the poor girl is out of her head. What is that you say? Not my daughter?
Perhaps some one will recognize the melody, and lead me back to her!" A beautifully majestic, ermined figure stepped graciously out of the church, as La Frochard rejoined Louise and began whining: "Charity! In the name of God, Charity!" whilst the girl's voice lifted up in an old plaintive melody. The lady was the Countess de Linieres, returning from her devotions.
Our little heroine had lived quietly for many months in the faubourg lodgings to which, perforce, she had to return after her vain visit to the Frochard cellar and her rough handling by the Carmognole rioters.
Pale narrow spirituelle features, lit by beautiful eyes and surmounted by a wealth of straight black hair; a form haggard, weazened by deformity, yet evidencing muscular toil; delicate hands and feet that like the features bespoke the poesy of soul within mis-shapen shell, the hunchback scissors-grinder Pierre Frochard presented a remarkable aspect which, once seen, no one could ever forget!
The outcast ran groping and stumbling forward, no longer singing, but calling "Henriette!" Her keeper, Widow Frochard, was not in sight. The blind girl came nearer. Frochard emerged from a ginshop and tried to head her off. The Mother followed Henriette to the window. The latter encouraged Louise with little cries: "Don't get excited!" "It's all right!" "Wait there!"
I told the old woman so, asked her to bring the girl for treatment to La Force, but they have never shown up " "Quick! Quick!" cried Henriette. "Tell me, Doctor, where Mere Frochard lives?" "Oh, they inhabit an old boathouse at the end of the Rue de Brissac down on the banks of the river Seine. There's a cellar entrance to their hovel near the Paris-Normandy coach house.
Tenderly he inquired about her misfortune, and she told him the sad tale of the journey and Henriette's kidnapping.... Their talk was broken in upon by the entry of the hag Mere Frochard and her elder son. Alas, poor Louise! In finding a friend thou hast likewise found the bitter bread of the stranger and the slavery of the Frochard clan! The wretched hunchback is himself in thrall.
"You, monsieur?" exclaimed Henriette in surprise. "Yes yes, a young girl led by an old woman who calls her Louise " "Yes yes, that's her name," and the young girl became breathless with excitement. "I know the old woman, too," continued the Doctor. "She is called La Frochard an old hag who goes about whining for alms in the name of Heaven and seven small children.
It was not easy, however, to avoid the good Doctor from La Force, who gave them a donative and looked at the girl with deep professional interest. Despite the beggar's tactics, he insisted on examining the pupils, then called La Frochard aside. "Don't encourage her too much," said the old gentlemen kindly, "but bring her to me. I am quite sure that she can be cured."
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