Chapter THE NINTH: A French Avocat

December came in with intense severity. Icicles a yard long hung to the eaves, and the snow lay unmelted for days together on the roofs. More often than not we were without wood for our fire, and when we had it, it was green and unseasoned, and only smouldered away with a smoke that stung and irritated our eyes. Our insufficient and unwholesome food supplied us with no inward warmth. Coal in that remote district cost too much for any but the wealthiest people, Now and then I caught a glimpse of a blazing fire in the houses I had to pass, to get to our chamber over Monsieur Perrier's workshop; and in an evening the dainty, savory smell of dinner, cooking in the kitchen adjoining, sometimes filled the frosty air. Both sight and scent were tantalizing, and my dreams at night were generally of pleasant food and warm firesides.

At times the pangs of hunger grew too strong for us both, and forced me to spend a little of the money I was nursing so carefully. As soon as I could make myself understood, I went out occasionally after dark, to buy bread-and-milk.

Noireau was a curious town, the streets everywhere steep and narrow, and the houses, pell-mell, rich and poor, large and small huddled together without order. Almost opposite the handsome dwelling, the photograph of which had misled me, stood a little house where I could buy rich, creamy milk. It was sold by a Mademoiselle Rosalie, an old maid, whom I generally found solitarily reading a _Journal pour Tous_ with her feet upon a _chaufferette_, and no light save that of her little oil-lamp. She had never sat by a fire in her life, she told me, burning her face and spoiling her _teint_. Her dwelling consisted of a single room, with a shed opening out of it, where she kept her milkpans. She was the only person I spoke to out of Madame Perrier's own household.

"Is Monsieur Perrier an avocat?" I asked her one day, as soon as I could understand what she might say in reply. There was very little doubt in my mind as to what her answer would be.

"An avocat, mademoiselle?" She repeated, shrugging her shoulders; "who has told you that? Are the avocats in England like Emile? He is my relation, and you see me! He is a bailiff; do you understand? If I go in debt, he comes and takes possession of my goods, you see. It is very simple. One need not be very learned to do that. Emile Perrier an avocat? Bah!"

"What is an avocat?" I inquired.

"An avocat is even higher than a notaire," she answered; "he gives counsel; he pleads before the judges. It is a high _rôle_. One must be very learned, very eloquent, to be an avocat."

"I suppose he must be a gentleman," I remarked.

"A gentleman, mademoiselle?" she said; "I do not understand you. There is equality in France. We are all messieurs and mesdames. There is monsieur the bailiff, and monsieur the duke; and there is madame the washer-woman, and madame the duchess. We are all gentlemen, all ladies. It is not the same in your country."

"Not at all," I answered.

"Did my little Emile tell you he was an avocat, mademoiselle?" she asked.

"No," I said. I was on my guard, even if I had known French well enough to explain the deception practised upon me. She looked as if she did not believe me, but smiled and nodded with imperturbable politeness, as I carried off my jug of milk.

So Monsieur Perrier was nothing higher than a bailiff, and with very little to do even in that line of the law! He took off his tasselled cap to me as I passed his workshop, and went up-stairs with the milk to Minima, who was already gone to bed for the sake of warmth. The discovery did not affect me with surprise. If he had been an avocat, my astonishment at French barristers would have been extreme.

Yet there was something galling in the idea of being under the roof of a man and woman of that class, in some sort in their power and under their control. The low, vulgar cunning of their nature appeared more clearly to me. There was no chance of success in any contest with them, for they were too boorish to be reached by any weapon I could use. All I could do was to keep as far aloof from them as possible.

This was not difficult to do, for neither of them interfered with the affairs of the school, and we saw them only at meal times, when they watched every mouthful we ate with keen eyes.

I found that I had no duties to perform as a teacher, for none of the three French pupils desired to learn English. English girls, who had been decoyed into the same snare by the same false photograph and prospectus which had entrapped me, were all of families too poor to be able to forfeit the money which had been paid in advance for their French education. Two of them, however, completed their term at Christmas, and returned home weak and ill; the third was to leave in the spring. I did not hear that any more pupils were expected, and why Madame Perrier should have engaged any English teacher became a problem to me. The premium I had paid was too small to cover my expenses for a year, though we were living at so scanty a cost. It was not long before I understood my engagement better.

I studied the language diligently. I felt myself among foreigners and foes, and I was helpless till I could comprehend what they were saying in my presence. Having no other occupation, I made rapid progress, though Mademoiselle Morel, the head governess, gave me very little assistance.

She was a dull, heavy, yet crafty-looking woman, who had taken a first-class diploma as a teacher; yet, as far as I could judge, knew very much less than most English governesses who are uncertificated. So far from there being any professors attending the school, I could not discover that there were any in the town. It was a cotton-manufacturing town, with a population of six thousand, most of them hand-loom weavers. There were three or four small factories, built on the banks of the river, where the hands were at work from six in the morning till ten at night, Sundays included. There was not much intellectual life here; a professor would have little chance of making a living.

At first Minima, and I took long walks together into the country surrounding Noireau, a beautiful country, even in November. Once out of the vapor lying in the valley, at the bottom of which the town was built, the atmosphere showed itself as exquisitely clear, with no smoke in it, except the fine blue smoke of wood-fire. We could distinguish the shapes of trees standing out against the horizon, miles and miles away; while between us and it lay slopes of brown woodland and green pastures, with long rows of slim poplars, the yellow leaves clinging to them still, and winding round them, like garlands on a May-pole. But this pleasure was a costly one, for it awoke pangs of hunger, which I was compelled to appease by drawing upon my rapidly-emptying purse. We learned that it was necessary to stay in-doors, and cultivate a small appetite.

"Am I getting very thin?" asked Minima one day, as she held up her transparent hand against the light; "how thin do you think I could get without dying, Aunt Nelly?"

"Oh! a great deal thinner, my darling," I said, kissing the little fingers, My heart was bound up in the child. I had been so lonely without her, that now her constant companionship, her half-womanly, half-babyish prattle seemed necessary to me. There was no longer any question in my mind as to whether I could leave her. I only wondered what I should do when my year was run out, and only one of those four of hers, for which these wretches had received the payment.

"Some people can get very thin indeed," she went on, with her shrewd, quaint smile; "I've heard the boys at school talk about it. One of them had seen a living skeleton, that was all skin and bone, and no flesh. I shouldn't like to be a living skeleton, and be made a show of. Do you think I ever shall be, if I stay here four years? Perhaps they'd take me about as a show."

"Why, you are talking nonsense, Minima," I answered.

"Am I?" she said, wistfully, as if the idea really troubled her; "I dream of it often and often. I can feel all my bones now, and count them, when I'm in bed. Some of them are getting very sharp. The boys used to say they'd get as sharp as knives sometimes, and cut through the skin. But father said it was only boys' talk."

"Your father was right," I answered; "you must think of what he said, not the boys' talk."

"But," she continued, "the boys said sometimes people get so hungry they bite pieces out of their arms. I don't think I could ever be so hungry as that; do you?"

"Minima," I said, starting up, "let us run to Mademoiselle Rosalie's for some bread-and-milk."

"You're afraid of me beginning to eat myself!" she cried, with a little laugh. But she was the first to reach Mademoiselle Rosalie's door; and I watched her devouring her bread-and-milk with the eagerness of a ravenous appetite.

Very fast melted away my money. I could not see the child pining with hunger, though every sou I spent made our return to England more difficult. Madame Perrier put no hinderance in my way, for the more food we purchased ourselves, the less we ate at her table. The bitter cold and the coarse food told upon Minima's delicate little frame. Yet what could I do? I dared not write to Mrs. Wilkinson, and I very much doubted if there would be any benefit to be hoped for if I ran the risk. Minima did not know the address of any one of the persons who had subscribed for her education and board; to her they were only the fathers and mothers of the boys of whom she talked so much. She was as friendless as I was in the world.

So far away were Dr. Martin Dobrée and Tardif, that I dared not count them as friends who could have any power to help me. Better for Dr. Martin Dobrée if he could altogether forget me, and return to his cousin Julia. Perhaps he had done so already.

How long was this loneliness, this friendlessness to be my lot? I was so young yet, that my life seemed endless as it stretched before me. Poor, desolate, hunted, I shrank from life as an evil thing, and longed impatiently to be rid of it. Yet how could I escape even from its present phase?