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In three days time he had little doubt he would be in possession of the wondrous secret, which would probably bring many strange matters to light. Mademoiselle Scuderi knew well what the terrible La Regnie meant by the "powerful means," which were to break down Olivier's heroism. It was but too clear that the unfortunate wretch was threatened with the torture.
La Regnie received her with all the consideration which was the due of a lady of her worth, held in high esteem by His Majesty himself. He listened in silence to all she had to say concerning Olivier's circumstances, relationships, and character; and also concerning the crime itself.
They see God in the shape of a man. We have keener eyes. But the light that we love is the same." The boy went home through the dark streets in which the gas-lamps were not yet lit. Olivier's words were ringing in his head. He thought that it was as cruel to laugh at people because they had weak eyes as because they were hunchbacked.
As the millionaire once said to the simple person who came and asked him to help a poverty-stricken artist: "But, sir, Mozart died of poverty." They would have thought it very bad taste on Olivier's part if he had told them that Mozart would have asked nothing better than to go on living, and that Christophe was determined to do so.
He did not share Olivier's calm fatalism: he had no such confidence in the continuance of a race which did not defend itself, and his desire was to appeal to all the healthy forces of the nation, to call forth and band together all the honest men in the whole of France.
Olivier's calm confidence in the destinies of France had been transformed in his little protege into a burning faith, hungering for action and sure of triumph. He willed it, he said it, he clamored for it. It was by his exalted faith and his optimism that he had uplifted the souls of the French public. His book had been as effective as a battle.
In spite of everything they found it very difficult to better their lot. Their love for each other made them do many stupid things. Christophe got into debt over getting a volume of Olivier's poems published secretly, and not a single copy was sold. Olivier induced Christophe to give a concert, and hardly anybody came to it.
On that spring evening Olivier's calm words kindled the light that never dies in the mind hidden in the boy's deformed body, as in a battered lantern. He understood none of Olivier's arguments: he hardly heard them. But the legends and images which were only beautiful stories and parables to Olivier, took living shape and form in his mind, and were most real.
Colette, on her part, did not go out of her way to see him: she liked Olivier, but she did not like unhappy people: she used to declare that she was so sensitive that she could not bear the sight of sorrow: she waited until Olivier's sorrow was over before she remembered his existence.
As soon as she saw Olivier's convulsed and livid face, she guessed that he had reached the limit of suffering. She hastened toward him, with an impulse from all her poor soul, so agonized also, and from her poor body, that was itself so wounded. Throwing her hands upon his shoulders, and plunging her glance into the depths of his eyes, she said: "Oh, how unhappy you are!"
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