Mlle. Fouchette Part 9

"But Notre Dame----"

"What's Notre Dame to me? Nothing!"

A slight gesture of impatience.

"But----"

"What's it for?"

"Why, it's a church, pet.i.te."

"A church! And what's that to me?"

"Well, truly, I don't know, child. Nothing, I suppose."

"Nothing!"

She snapped her fingers contemptuously.

"Here is the Prefecture."

It was the Prefecture de Police and not Notre Dame that had to do with little Fouchette and her kind. She knew what the Prefecture was, though she now saw it for the first time. And she shivered in her wet rags as the carriage turned into the great court-yard surrounded by the immense stone quadrangle that fronts upon the quai.

A troop of the Garde de Paris was drilling at the upper end of the court. Sentinels with gay uniforms and fixed bayonets solemnly paraded at the three gate-ways.

"Come, pet.i.te," said the man, flinging open the carriage doors and lifting the child in his arms to the ground. The dog leaped out after her and looked uneasily up and down.

Half an hour later when Fouchette emerged with her conductor she had undergone a transformation that would have rendered her unrecognizable in Charenton. She had not only been washed and combed and rubbed down, but had been arrayed in a frock of grayish material, a chip hat with flowers in it, and shoes and stockings. She was so excited over the grandeur of her personal appearance that she had completely lost her bearings. It is true the hat was too old for a child of her years, and the coa.r.s.e new costume was several sizes too large for her bony little frame, and the shoes were very embarra.s.sing, but to Fouchette they seemed the outfit of a "real lady."

She had entered the Prefecture sullenly, desperately, half expecting to be sent to a lonely cell and perhaps loaded with chains,--she had heard tell of such things,--and, instead, had been treated with kindness by a gentle matron, her body washed and clothed, her stomach made glad with rich soup and bread and milk, while Tartar was amply provided for before her own eyes.

Fouchette was still in a daze when she found herself again in the closed carriage, with Tartar at her feet, being whirled away at a pace that seemed to threaten the lives of everybody in the streets. The same man sat beside her, and an extra man had, at the last moment, clambered up by the side of the driver.

This furious speed was continued for a long time, until Fouchette began to wonder more and more where they were going. She could not recognize anything en route, and the man was now serious and taciturn.

All at once she saw that they were approaching the barrier. Things looked differently from a carriage window, and yet there was a familiar air about the surroundings.

The man noticed her uneasiness and pulled down the blinds.

A terrible fear now seized her. Were they going to take her back to the Podvins?

This fear increased as the speed of the vehicle lessened and as Tartar began to move about impatiently. He was trying to get his nose under the curtain.

"Hold him down!" said the man in a low voice. He was afraid to touch the dog himself.

"Oh, monsieur!" she finally exclaimed, "we are not going to--to----"

"The Rendez-Vous pour Cochers, my little Fouchette," he put in, with a smile.

"Oh, mon Dieu! Please, monsieur! Take me anywhere else,--back to the Prefecture--to prison--anywhere but to this place! They'll kill me!

Oh, they'll kill me, monsieur!"

"Bah! No, they won't, little one. We'll take care of that."

"But----"

"Besides," he continued, rea.s.suringly, "we're not going to leave you there, so don't be afraid. Maybe you won't have to get out, or be seen even, if you do as I tell you. Have no fear."

"Mon Dieu! monsieur does not know. They'll kill you, too!"

"No, they won't. And I know all about them, my child. There are four of us, and---- Keep the dog down till I open the door."

The carriage had stopped.

"Stay right where you are," he whispered. "Let the dog out."

Tartar could not have been held in by both of them. He jumped to the ground with joyous barks of recognition.

It was now ten o'clock, and the usual odors of a Parisian second breakfast permeated the atmosphere of the cabaret.

Four or five rough-looking men were lounging about, gossiping over their absinthe or aperatif. Monsieur Podvin was already, at this early hour in the day, on his second bottle of ordinaire. Opposite, as usual, sat le Cochon.

Madame Podvin was busily burnishing up the zinc bar, and the vigorous and spiteful way in which she did this betrayed the fact that she was in bad temper. She was reserving an extra force of pent-up wrath against the moment when that "lazy little beast Fouchette" should put in an appearance.

Monsieur Podvin was also irritated, but not because of Fouchette's prolonged absence. He was concerned about Tartar.

Le Cochon sympathized with both of them.

Among the various theories offered for these disappearances madame thought that Fouchette was simply playing truant. The dog did not bother her calculation, as he would not share the punishment.

Monsieur was certain that the girl had enticed the dog away from home; though why she had taken her basket and hook if she were not coming back he could not say.

Le Cochon took a gloomy view of it. He was afraid some accident had befallen her,--she might have got run over by a fiacre, or have fallen into the river.

"Nonsense!" protested M. Podvin. "The dog would come home. He wouldn't get run over too, and you couldn't drown a spaniel."

It was precisely at this moment that the loud barking of Tartar broke upon their ears, confirming his master's judgment and sending a thrill through everybody in the room. This sensation, however, was by no means the same.

The brute master alone rejoiced for pure love of the dog and for the dog's sake.

Madame Podvin went in search of a certain stout strap used upon Fouchette on special occasions of ceremonial penological procedure.

Two strange men seated at some distance from each other, and who up to that moment had ignored each other's existence, exchanged looks of intelligence and rose as if to leave the place.

Le Cochon alone seemed disconcerted. His beetle brows clouded, and his right hand involuntarily sought the handle of his knife.

The instincts of the robber were this time unerring. For Tartar had scarcely licked the dirty hand of his master, when his eyes fell upon the would-be murderer of his beloved mistress. The sight appeared to startle the animal at first. But only for a second. Then, with a growl of rage that began low and ominously, like the first notes of a thunder-storm, and swelled into a howl, the spaniel sprang upon the villain and fastened his fangs in his fleshy throat.