“And didn’t you complain to the police?”
“At first I felt only grief at Catherine’s departure; but I felt soon great pain in all my limbs,—I could not walk. Alas, what I had so long dreaded had happened! Yes, I told my brother that one day my husband would beat me so that I should be obliged to go to the hospital,—and then what would become of my children? And now here I am in the hospital, and what, indeed, will become of my children? The neighbours went for the commissary, who came. I didn’t like to denounce Duport, but I was obliged, in consequence of my daughter; only I said that in our quarrel about our daughter he had pushed me, that it was nothing, but I wanted my daughter Catherine because I feared the bad woman with whom my husband lived would be the ruin of her.”
“Well, and wha
