"Woman," said the advocate sternly, and wheeling his arm-chair round so as to face her, "Woman, where is your son?"
"Helas!" she exclaimed, and shrugged her shoulders, as much as to say, "I don't know where he is;" and smiled a rueful smile.
"No grinning now," cried the lawyer, raising his finger and shaking it at her, and frowning as he was wont to do when he wished to intimidate a witness, "no grinning now, madam. Will you pretend to say you know nothing of where he was last night, where he is at present?"
"Helas!" again exclaimed the affrighted Babet: "sir you forget yourself. Last night? Why it is yet night. Open the shutters and put out the lamp, and you will still be in darkness. Let me return to bed."
"Babet Blais, many a better woman than you have I wished bedridden," the advocate cried with bitterness. "Beshrew me, but your answer. Remember I am flint if you are steel, hence the less often we are smitten together in this enquiry, the fewer may be the revealing sparks. Babet Blais, here is an affair of blackest tinder, whereon your bated breath has blown already, until it glows upon your guilty face, as grimly as the lurid East that brews a rainy day, to you the type of tears."
[Illustration: "Babet Blais, here is an affair of blackest tinder, whereon your bated breath has blown already, until it glows upon your guilty face."]
"What do you mean?" demanded the half mystified and still dissembling woman, in terror.
"What do I mean? I mean that you shall tell me where your son was during the last night, and where he is now."
"Where he is _now_?" echoed Babet, "Last night? it is now night, or only just near dawning."
"Yes, we are near the dawning," mocked the old man, with loud, relentless equivoque. "Madam, shed here the sunbeams of your highest intelligence; clear the dull atmosphere of your soul from fog; and let us see and hear respecting this occurrence, all that yourself have seen, and heard, and known."
"Master, I know nothing," said she, "what affair?" enquired the woman, fitfully.
"Is Narcisse at home?" bellowed the advocate, quivering with excitement, and red to the roots of his white hair with wrath. "Evil betide me that he should have ever made here his home;" he continued. "Who called him hither? I? No, no; I called for aught that might see fit to come, conditioned that it came in human guise; but yonder frothy fool, yon swarthy pigmy, I did not summon him. I called for anything of earth, but Heaven (to punish me) straight passed the unhallowed call to hell, that sent me up a demon." The apartment resounded with the last word, and still the old man's voice was heard like the departing rumble of a thunder peal, as he continued, with clasped hands and upturned eyes, whilst his countenance assumed an air of singular elevation, passionately exclaiming: "Oh, that a man who could have entertained the gods with high conceits and philosophic parle,--could have communed with spirits of the skies, should be assailed and pestered from the pit!--Go on, woman, we will exorcise you, we will purge you, though you be fouler than the Augean stable, that had been left uncleaned for thirty years; ay, though you be as foul as is the stall that holds the grimy company of the lost, and which goes uncleaned for ever. Proceed, I charge thee!" and the fierce-eyed lawyer sat dilated and erect in his chair, glaring upon her like a serpent rearing its crest from amidst its coils, as he waited for an answer.