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Updated: May 23, 2025
"I'm used to that; I've had a bad time here in Pontiac." His thin hands moved restlessly. His leg moved, and the little bell tinkled the bell that had been like the bell of a leper these years past. "But you live, and you have years yet before you, in the providence of God. Luc Pomfrette, you blasphemed against your baptism, and horribly against God himself.
"I will not obey you, M'sieu' le Cure," said he. "I'll forgive him before he repents." "You will share his sin," answered the Cure sternly. "No; his punishment, M'sieu'," said the dwarf; and turning on his heel, he trotted to where Pomfrette stood alone in the middle of the road, a dark, morose figure, hatred and a wild trouble in his face.
For four days, all alone, he lay burning with fever and inflammation, and when Parpon found him he was almost dead. Then began a fight for life again, in which Parpon was the only physician; for Pomfrette would not allow the Little Chemist or a doctor near him. Parpon at last gave up hope; but one night, when he came back from the village, he saw, to his joy, old Mme.
"Till he was carried, M'sieu' le Cure and I've carried him." "Did you come of your own free will, and with a repentant heart, Luc Pomfrette?" asked the Cure. "I did not know I was coming no." Pomfrette's brown eyes met the priest's unflinchingly. "You have defied God, and yet He has spared your life." "I'd rather have died," answered the sick man simply. "Died, and been cast to perdition!"
Already banishment, isolation, seemed to possess Pomfrette, to surround him with loneliness. The very effort he made to be defiant of his fate appeared to make him still more solitary.
Pomfrette drew his rough knuckles across his forehead in a dazed way; then, as the significance of the thing came home to him, he broke out with a fierce oath, and strode away down the yard and into the road. On the way to his house he met Duclosse the mealman and Garotte the lime-burner. He wondered what they would do.
Parpon's hands alone cared for the house; he did all that was to be done; no woman had entered the place since Pomfrette's cousin, old Mme. Burgoyne, left it on the day of his shame. When at last Pomfrette opened his eyes, and saw the Cure standing beside him, he turned his face to the wall, and to the exhortation addressed to him he answered nothing.
Yet some one man had worn just such a bell every year in Pontiac. It was the mark of honour conferred upon a voyageur by his fellows, the token of his prowess and his skill. This year Luc Pomfrette had won it, and that very day it had been buckled round his leg with songs and toasts.
He did not disturb her, for she had no love for him, and he waited till she had gone. When he came into the room again he found Pomfrette in a sweet sleep, and a jug of tincture, with a little tin cup, placed by the bed. Time and again he had sent for Mme. Degardy, but she would not come.
For answer there came a sob, and then a terrible burst of weeping and anger and passionate denunciations against Junie Gauloir, against Pontiac, against the world. Parpon held his peace. The days, weeks, and months went by; and the months stretched to three years. In all that time Pomfrette came and went through Pontiac, shunned and unrepentant.
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