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His feeling to-day was that Mme Roussell's paralysis was due to arsenical dosage, and that Perrotte had died of poisoning. Helene, speaking to him of Perrotte, had said, ``She's a chest subject. She'll never get better! And she had used the same phrase, ``never get better, with regard to little Rabot.
The driver was going to answer with a jest, when Rabot dived head first towards the door, pushed forward by a vigorous shove from his wife, a tall, square woman with a large, round stomach like a barrel, and hands as large as hams. Rabot slipped into the wagon like a rat entering a hole. "Maitre Caniveau."
He then went on to describe the illness of Mme Rabot. He and his confreres had attributed her sickness to the fact that she was enceinte, and to the effect of her child's death upon her while in that condition. A miscarriage of a distressing nature confirmed the first prognosis. But later he and his confreres saw reason to change their minds.
The accounts, nevertheless, insist more than once that between 1833 and 1841 Helene put away twenty-three persons. If she managed only six at Guern, that total should be twenty-two. From 1849 she accounted for Albert Rabot, the infant Ozanne, Perrotte Mace, Rose Tessier, and Rosalie Sarrazin five. We need no chartered accountant to certify our figures if we make the total twenty-eight.
She replied authoritatively in a strong, clear voice: "Sixteen children, Monsieur le cure, fifteen of them by my husband!" And Rabot smiled broadly, nodding his head. He was responsible for fifteen, he alone, Rabot! His wife said so! Therefore there could be no doubt about it. And he was proud! And whose was the sixteenth? She didn't tell. It was doubtless the first.
The line may still be traced on the map, or walked round through a series of shipping suburbs; but it is uninteresting to follow, a great part of its course lying through the more squalid portions of the town. The only remaining gate is that known as the Rabot , a very interesting and picturesque object situated in a particularly slummy quarter.
The change seen in the syrup brought back from M. Rabot's was not to be accounted for by such fermentation as the mere warmth of the hand could bring about. Several witnesses, interrupted by denials and explanations from the accused, testified to having heard Helene say that neither the Rabot boy nor his mother would recover.
They were petty thefts, but towards the end of the period they begin to indicate a change in Helene's habits. She seems to have taken to drink, for her thefts are mostly of wine and eau de vie. In March 1848 Helene was in Rennes. On the 6th of November of the following year, having been dismissed from several houses for theft, she became sole domestic servant to a married couple called Rabot.
They all recovered after Helene had departed, but Rabot, like M. Dupuy-de-Lome, was partially paralysed for months afterwards. In Helene's next situation, with people called Ozanne, her way of abstracting liquor again was noticed. She was chided for stealing eau de vie. Soon after that the Ozannes' little son died suddenly, very suddenly. The doctor called in thought it was from a croup fever.
However, as Belhomme seemed angry at their making fun of him, the priest changed the conversation and turning to Rabot's big wife, said: "You have a large family, haven't you?" "Oh, yes, Monsieur le cure and it's a pretty hard matter to bring them up!" Rabot agreed, nodding his head as though to say: "Oh, yes, it's a hard thing to bring up!" "How many children?"