"When I came to myself I found my two little boys beside me weeping."
"Gone!" cried the poor mother, sobbing convulsively; "yes, gone! My other children told me that their father had struck her, threatening to take what life I had remaining on the spot. Then, what could you expect? the poor child was bewildered; she threw herself upon me for a last embrace, kissed her little brothers, and then my husband carried her off! Ah! that bad woman waited for them at the door, I am sure!"
"And could you not complain to the police?"
"At first I could think of nothing but Catharine's departure, but I soon felt great pains all over my body, I could not walk. Alas! what I had so much dreaded arrived. Yes--I had said to my brother, 'Some day my husband will beat me so hard--so hard, that I shall be obliged to go to a hospital. Then, my children, what will become of them?' And now here I am, at the hospital, and I say, What will become of my children?"
"But is there not any justice, then, my God! for the poor?"
"Too dear! too dear for us, as my brother said," answered Jeanne Duport, with bitterness. "My neighbors went to seek the police, they came: it was painful for me to denounce Duport, but on account of my daughter it was necessary. I said only that, in a quarrel I had with him about taking away my daughter, he had pushed me; that it was nothing, but that I wanted my daughter back again."
"That my husband had a right to take away his child, not being separated from me. 'You have only one way,' said the officer to me: 'commence a civil suit, demand a separation of body, and then the blows which your husband has given you, his conduct with this vile woman, will be in your favor, and they will force him to deliver up your daughter; otherwise, he can keep her in his own right.' 'But to commence a suit! I have not the means! I have my children to feed.' 'What can I do?' said he; 'so it is.' Yes," repeated Jeanne, sobbing, "he was right; so it is; and because that so it is, in three months, perhaps, my daughter will be a street-walker! while, if I had had the means to commence a suit, it would not have happened."
"But that will never happen, your daughter must love you so much."
"But she is so young! At that age, fear, bad treatment, bad counsels, bad examples! Poor Catharine! so gentle, so loving! and I, who only this year wished her to renew her first communion!"