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Updated: May 19, 2025
The girl's fair, thin face wore its wonted expression of shrewd intelligence, and even now, however woeful her rags, it was occasionally brightened by a childish smile. Pierre and Marie, who were both there, felt extremely touched. Near them was Madame Mathis, young Victor's mother, who had come to help Mere-Grand with the mending of some house-linen.
Guillaume was just thinking of Victor Mathis, when he fancied that he saw him standing in the front row of sightseers whom the guards held in check. It was indeed he, with his thin, beardless, pale, drawn face. Short as he was, he had to raise himself on tiptoes in order to see anything. Near him was a big, red-haired girl who gesticulated; but for his part he never stirred or spoke.
Before these two stood a couple of mugs of beer, which they drank slowly and in silence. "You are making a great mistake, my dear," said Hyacinthe with a frank laugh, "if you are looking for brigands in disguise. That poor fellow with the pale face, who surely doesn't have food to eat every day, was my schoolfellow at Condorcet!" Bergaz expressed his amazement. "What! you knew Mathis at Condorcet!
Then, when Pierre had installed himself at the table, on the chair previously occupied by Salvat, she went on talking, seeking to excuse her man for his scanty politeness: "He hasn't a bad heart, but he's had so many worries in life that he has become a bit cracked. It's like that young man whom you just saw here, Monsieur Victor Mathis.
And if on the one hand Victor Mathis had avenged Salvat, he had also slain him, so universal had been the cry of reprobation roused by the second crime, which was yet more monstrous and more useless than the first.
"Well, I and Bud Wilson " But Captain Nance never allowed John Mathis to finish, for as the light of that far-off truth dawned upon him and seemed to bring back the recollection of that nice brown chicken and the missing biscuits he said: "No, I'll never forgive you; go home and don't try for religion any longer, for a crime as heinous as yours is beyond forgiveness. Oh, such depravity!"
They had neither laughed nor applauded; they seemed to be simply a couple of tired fellows who were resting, and in whose opinion one is best hidden in the midst of a crowd. All at once, though, Raphanel turned towards Bergaz: "That's surely little Mathis over yonder. But who's that with him?" Bergaz made an evasive gesture; he did not know. Still, he no longer took his eyes from Raphanel.
Madame Mathis, a short, dark woman, with a sad, gentle, retiring face, came in. Invariably clad in the same black gown, she showed all the anxious timidity of a poor creature whom the storms of life perpetually assailed.
And at the same time, yonder in Abbe Rose's peaceful dining-room, he fancied he could again see the gentle face of Madame Mathis, so sad and so resigned, living on solely by the force of the last trembling hope which she had unhappily set in her son.
Then as Pierre, shuddering and already suspecting the truth, asked him if he knew who the man was that had been arrested, he slowly replied: "The worry is that you happen to know him it was little Victor Mathis." Pierre tried to silence Janzen too late. He had suddenly remembered that Victor's mother had been sitting in a dark corner behind them a short time previously. Was she still there?
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