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Updated: July 8, 2025
As she once more mentally recorded this little vow, she looked at Jeanne-Marie, who was still sitting by her bedside knitting. "Jeanne-Marie," she said in her tired, feeble little voice, and putting out one of her small thin hands, "you are very, very good to me; I can't think how any one can be so kind as you are; I shall love you all my life.
A man, with a heavy, loutish face and figure, was sitting with his arms on the table, twirling a glass about in his fingers, a bottle half full of vine before him. He turned round as Jeanne-Marie entered with Madelon in her arms, and rising slowly went towards them. "Eh, Jeanne-Marie, what have you got there?" he said.
"I told him," he said, slowly and reluctantly, "that it was a queer thing you should have picked up your niece in the street, and that I didn't believe she was your niece at all; and no more I do, Jeanne-Marie," he added, gaining courage as he spoke. "Ah! you told him that?" said the woman.
But it is likely that the sombre satire of the pure and beautiful Jeanne-Marie Philipon touched the heart of Paris more than the shedding of tears and shrieking lamentations. The wife of Roland, led to the scaffold, faced with the stern certainty of death, asks with calm dignity for pen, ink, and paper, "so that she might write the strange thoughts that were rising in her."
And had Madelon then no regrets at leaving the little cottage, where she had been tended with such motherly care? Some, perhaps; for as she sat that last evening watching Jeanne-Marie at her work, she, too, sighed a little; and at last, clasping her arms round the woman's neck, she cried, "Jeanne-Marie, I will love you always always! I will never forget you!"
So as your work is done," Jeanne-Marie added with a sigh, "there is nothing to keep you, and you may go as soon as you like." "May I" cried Madelon; "to-morrow, next day? Ah! Jeanne-Marie, how happy you have made me; you will know why, you will understand some day tell me when I shall go." "We will say the day after to-morrow. I will get your things ready," answered Jeanne-Marie.
"How places and things change!" said Madelon, as they drove along; "we have had two disappointments to-day shall we have a third, I wonder? Supposing Jeanne-Marie should have gone to live in another house? Ah! how glad I shall be to see her again! and she will be pleased to see me, I know." As she spoke, the scattered houses, the church, the white cottages of Le Trooz came in sight.
Mrs. Treherne came into the little public room, which happened to be empty just then, and siting down on one of the wooden chairs, began to talk to Jeanne-Marie; whilst Madelon, escaping, made her way to the garden at the back, where she had spent so many peaceful hours.
No one knew anything of Jeanne-Marie Kermadec. At last one man remembered that a family of that name had remained less than a year and had gone back to France. Then he had wandered off again, and from the cafés comrades of his called to him to join them, but he strolled on, and suddenly he had seen a hollow-eyed woman enter a drinking-shop, and on her arm she bore a baby.
"That is as may be," says melancholy Jeanne-Marie, disengaging herself. "Ah! you will not believe me," said Madelon; "but I tell you I never forget, and you have been so good, so kind to me! Sometimes I think I should like to stay with you always would you let me?" "Would I let you?" said Jeanne-Marie, dropping her work suddenly, and looking at the child.
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