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Updated: May 21, 2025
Finally she saw Talouel, who asked her roughly what she was doing there. "Monsieur Vulfran told me to come this morning to the office to see him," she said. "Outside there, is not the office," he said. "I was waiting to be called in," she replied. "Come up then." She went up the steps, following him in. "What did you do at Saint-Pipoy?" he asked, turning to look at her.
Where was this little girl going? They questioned one another as they stood at the doors, for few people in the village knew of her and of the position that M. Vulfran had given her. When they arrived at Mother Françoise's house, Aunt Zenobie was leaning over the gate talking to two women.
She needed all her courage; it seemed as though he were trying to hypnotize her. In a hoarse voice which betrayed her emotion, but which did not tremble, however, she said: "Monsieur Vulfran forbade me to speak of this letter to anyone."
"You mean," he added, "that they have no more news of him since last November?" "There is no news since then. The French Consul at Serajevo, Bosnia, has sent me this information: "'Last November your son arrived at Serajevo practising the trade of a strolling photographer...." "What do you mean?" exclaimed M. Vulfran. "A strolling photographer!... My son?"
"He plied the trade of a photographer," continued the banker, consulting his notes, "and at the beginning of November he left Serajevo for Travnik, where he fell ill. He became very ill...." "My God!" cried the blind man. "Oh, God...." M. Vulfran had clasped his hands; he was trembling from head to foot, as though a vision of his son was standing before him.
She spent the greater part of the night turning these questions over in her little head. At last, tired out with the difficulties which confronted her, she dropped her curly head on the pillow and slept. The first thing that M. Vulfran did upon reaching his office in the morning was to open his mail. Domestic letters were arranged in one pile and foreign letters in another.
Belhomme was most enthusiastic in her praise of Perrine. "Does she show any intelligence?" asked M. Vulfran. "Why she is wonderfully intelligent," replied Mlle. Belhomme; "it would have been such a calamity if she had remained without an education...." M. Vulfran smiled at Mlle. Belhomme's words. "What about her spelling?" he asked. "Oh, that is very poor but she'll do better.
They had discussed the doings of the day just passed, so now they went on to the next day, to the work at the factories, the quarrels, the doings of the heads of the concern M. Vulfran Paindavoine and his nephews, whom they called "the kids," and the foreman, Talouel. They spoke of this man by name only once, but the names they called him bespoke better than words what they thought of him.
In the morning she went off with M. Vulfran; after she had finished luncheon she went at once to her own room. When they returned from the tour of the factories she went at once to her lessons with her governess; in the evening, upon leaving the table, she went up again to her own room. Madame Bretoneux could not get the girl alone to talk with her.
It was not until they had left behind the village, where their appearance excited the same curiosity as the evening before, and were going at a gentle trot along the lanes, that M. Vulfran began to talk. Perrine would like to have put off this moment; she was very nervous. "You told me that M. Theodore and Talouel came into your office?" said the blind man. "Yes, sir." "What did they want?"
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