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Her screams echoed through the upper den, to the anguish of Pierre and the mocking laughter of La Frochard and Jacques.... Pitiably broken, Louise was pulled out of the vile sink a few hours later, pledging wildly to obey the least of the hag's commands. La Frochard knew that her conquest was complete.
But the real masterful figure was the Widow Frochard, his mother, a hag whose street appearance nurses used to frighten naughty children.
Interspersed with the rabid Jacobins are other less partisan spectators, and among the hurrying throngs a close observer might have noticed the luckless Pierre Frochard and the blind girl Louise entering. They found seats on a front bench. "The judges are taking their places now," said Pierre. "You will soon hear the trials. Over on their right sits Robespierre, the dictator of France!"
Intermingled among them were the favored hoodlums of the Jacobin party, execrating the victims and howling with glee whenever the dread axe fell. Among the riff-raff, Mere Frochard and her precious son Jacques Frochard were conspicuous.
One hundred and fifty years of outlawry had made the Frochard clan a wolfish breed; battening on crime, thievery and beggary. The head of the house had suffered the extreme penalty meted out to highwaymen. The precious young hopeful, Jacques, was a chip of the old block possibly a shade more drunken and a shade less enterprising.
Rejoining Louise and smiling her wheedling beggar's smile at the departing Doctor, the features of Widow Frochard suddenly contorted in black rage she shook her fist at the physician directly his back was turned. Monstrous to restore sight, and thus make the girl worthless as object of charity! La Frochard felt she had good reason for her rage.
For no particular reason they were gloating over the cutting-off of aristocrats, whilst indulging in rough horseplay at the expense of the friends of the condemned. Picard's quaint look of helpless sympathy excited ready mirth. "Sniveling over those good-for-nothings, eh?" La Frochard curled her heavy moustachioed lip in scorn.
It would have been a comical sight if not so very serious a one; the tiny Henrietta shaking a woman twice her size, pummeling her, brow-beating her till La Frochard sinks to her knees and begs for mercy. "You have been lying, and that shawl proves it," cries Henriette. "Where is she?" The old woman gets up. She changes her tone to a whine, and tries to pat Henriette in pretended sympathy.
The ruffian Jacques Frochard was exhibiting a sinister interest in the blind girl. He had forbidden Pierre to speak to her or come near her, and now as he entered, the crippled brother shrank away. "Get up and go to work!" said Mother Frochard to the girl roughly, yanking her to her feet. "I'll find a way to make her work!" laughed Jacques with fiendish coarseness.
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