“Oh! it was not I, monsieur!” murmured Louise.
“I know it, it was the person who obtained the situation for you, who thought it his duty to tell that falsehood.--So you do not know your parents, my poor girl?”
“At Gagny. Ah! that’s it; I had forgotten the name of the village that you told me when you came here.--And the people who brought you up?”
“A kindhearted peasant woman, Nicole Frimousset. She was nursing Monsieur Chérubin de Grandvilain at the time.”
“Indeed! so this woman was the young Marquis de Grandvilain’s nurse?”
“Yes, monsieur, he is my foster-brother, and in my childhood we played together all the time.”
“Very good! But that doesn’t tell us how you went to Gagny.”
“Mon Dieu! monsieur, it was a lady--my mother, I suppose--who carried me to dear Nicole’s, and begged her to take me to nurse. I was then a year old; she left some money with Nicole and went away, saying that she would come again. The next year she sent a little more money by a messenger from Paris; but she didn’t come to see me, and no one ever after came to inquire for me.”
“But what was the lady’s name; where did she live?”
“Nicole didn’t think to ask her any of those questions; for she could not dream that she would abandon me, that she would never come again. The messenger from Paris did not know who the lady was who hired him on the street, he could not tell my good nurse anything.”
“But was no paper, no mark found on you or on your clothing?”
“That is very strange.--Don’t you agree with me, madame?”
As he asked this question Monsieur de Noirmont turned to his wife, whom he had not looked at while questioning Louise; Ernestine, whose eyes followed her father’s, uttered a piercing shriek.
“Oh dear!” she cried, “mamma has fainted!”
Madame de Noirmont’s head had fallen against the back of her chair; she had in fact lost consciousness, and the livid pallor of her face made her condition seem most alarming.
They hastened to her assistance; Ernestine wept and lamented as she kissed her mother again and again. Louise shared her distress; she lost her head, did not know what to do, and did not hear what was said to her. But Monsieur de Noirmont, who retained all his presence of mind, called Comtois, and, with his assistance, carried his wife to her room and laid her on her bed.