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All these stories were a terrible source of alarm to Henriette when she came to hear of them. Jean, fearing he might endanger the safety of his hosts, was again eager to get away, although the doctor declared he was still too weak, and she, saddened by the prospect of their approaching separation, insisted on his delaying his departure for two weeks. At the time of Father Fouchard’s arrest Jean had escaped a like fate by hiding in the barn, but he was liable to be taken and led away captive at any moment should there be further searches made. She was also anxious as to her uncle’s fate, and so she resolved one morning to go to Sedan and see the Delaherches, who had, it was said, a Prussian officer of great influence quartered in their house.

“Silvine,” she said, as she was about to start, “take good care of our patient; see he has his bouillon at noon and his medicine at four o’clock.”

The maid of all work, ever busy with her daily recurring tasks, was again the submissive and courageous woman she had been of old; she had the care of the farm now, moreover, in the absence of the master, while little Charlot was constantly at her heels, frisking and gamboling around her.

“Have no fear, madame, he shall want for nothing. I am here and will look out for him.”

Part III
Chapter VI

Life had fallen back into something like its accustomed routine with the Delaherches at their house in the Rue Maqua after the terrible shock of the capitulation, and for nearly four months the long days had been slowly slipping by under the depressing influence of the Prussian occupation.

There was one corner, however, of the immense structure that was always closed, as if it had no occupant: it was the chamber that Colonel de Vineuil still continued to inhabit, at the extreme end of the suite where the master and his family spent their daily life. While the other windows were thrown open, affording evidence by sight and sound of the activity that prevailed within, those of that room were dark and lifeless, their blinds invariably drawn. The colonel had complained that the daylight hurt his eyes; no one knew whether or not this was strictly true, but a lamp was kept burning at his bedside day and night to humor him in his fancy. For two long months he had kept his bed, although Major Bouroche asserted there was nothing more serious than a contusion of the ankle and a fragment of bone chipped away; the wound refused to heal and complications of various kinds had ensued. He was able to get up now, but was in such a state of utter mental prostration, his mysterious ailment had taken such firm hold upon his system, that he was content to spend his days in idleness, stretched on a lounge before a great wood fire. He had wasted away until he was little more than a shadow, and still the physician who was attending him could find no lesion to account for that lingering death. He was slowly fading away, like the flame of a lamp in which the supply of oil is giving out.

Mme. Delaherche, the mother, had immured herself there with him on the day succeeding the occupation. No doubt they understood each other, and had expressed in two words, once for all, their common purpose to seclude themselves in that apartment so long as there should be Prussians quartered in the house. They had afforded compulsory hospitality to many of the enemy for various lengths of time; one, a Captain, M. Gartlauben, was there still, had taken up his abode with them permanently. But never since that first day had mention of those things passed the colonel’s and the old lady’s lips. Notwithstanding her seventy-eight years she was up every morning soon as it was day and came and took her position in the fauteuil that was awaiting her in the chimney nook opposite her old friend. There, by the steady, tranquil lamplight, she applied herself industriously to knitting socks for the children of the poor, while he, his eyes fixed on the crumbling brands, with no occupation for body or mind, was as one already dead, in a state of constantly increasing stupor. They certainly did not exchange twenty words in the course of a day; whenever she, who still continued to go about the house at intervals, involuntarily allowed some bit of news from the outer world to escape her lips, he silenced her with a gesture, so that no tidings of the siege of Paris, the disasters on the Loire and all the daily renewed horrors of the invasion had gained admission there. But the colonel might stop his ears and shut out the light of day as he would in his self-appointed tomb; the air he breathed must have brought him through key-hole and crevices intelligence of the calamity that was everywhere throughout the land, for every new day beheld him sinking, slowly dying, despite his determination not to know the evil news.