MERE MALHEUR.
La Corriveau, eager to commence her work of wickedness, took up her abode at the house of her ancient friend, Mere Malheur, whither she went on the night of her first interview with Angelique.
It was a small house, built of uncut stones, with rough stone steps and lintels, a peaked roof, and low overhanging eaves, hiding itself under the shadow of the cliff, so closely that it seemed to form a part of the rock itself.
Its sole inmate, an old crone who had reached the last degree of woman's ugliness and woman's heartlessness,--Mere Malheur--sold fair winds to superstitious sailors and good luck to hunters and voyageurs. She was not a little suspected of dabbling in other forbidden things. Half believing in her own impostures, she regarded La Corriveau with a feeling akin to worship, who in return for this devotion imparted to her a few secrets of minor importance in her diabolic arts.
La Corriveau was ever a welcome guest at the house of Mere Malheur, who feasted her lavishly, and served her obsequiously, but did not press with undue curiosity to learn her business in the city. The two women understood one another well enough not to pry too closely into each other's secrets.
On this occasion La Corriveau was more than usually reserved, and while Mere Malheur eagerly detailed to her all the doings and undoings that had happened in her circle of acquaintance, she got little information in return. She shrewdly concluded that La Corriveau had business on hand which would not bear to be spoken of.
"When you need my help, ask for it without scruple, Dame Dodier," said the old crone. "I see you have something on hand that may need my aid. I would go into the fire to serve you, although I would not burn my finger for any other woman in the world, and you know it."
"Yes, I know it, Mere Malheur," La Corriveau spoke with an air of superiority, "and you say rightly: I have something on hand which I cannot accomplish alone, and I need your help, although I cannot tell you yet how or against whom."
"Is it a woman or a man? I will only ask that question, Dame Dodier," said the crone, turning upon her a pair of green, inquisitive eyes.
"It is a woman, and so of course you will help me. Our sex for the bottom of all mischief, Mere Malheur! I do not know what women are made for except to plague one another for the sake of worthless men!"
The old crone laughed a hideous laugh, and playfully pushed her long fingers into the ribs of La Corriveau. "Made for! quotha! men's temptation, to be sure, and the beginning of all mischief!"
"Pretty temptations you and I are, Mere Malheur!" replied La Corriveau, with a scornful laugh.
"Well, we were pretty temptations once! I will never give up that!
You must own, Dame Dodier, we were both pretty temptations once!"
"Pshaw! I wish I had been a man, for my part," replied La Corriveau, impetuously. "It was a spiteful cross of fate to make me a woman!"
"But, Dame Dodier, I like to be a woman, I do. A man cannot be half as wicked as a woman, especially if she be young and pretty," said the old woman, laughing till the tears ran out of her bleared eyes.
"Nay, that is true, Mere Malheur; the fairest women in the world are ever the worst! fair and false! fair and false! they are always so.
Not one better than another. Satan's mark is upon all of us!" La Corriveau looked an incarnation of Hecate as she uttered this calumny upon her sex.
"Ay, I have his mark on my knee, Dame Dodier," replied the crone.
"See here! It was pricked once in the high court of Arras, but the fool judge decided that it was a mole, and not a witch-mark! I escaped a red gown that time, however. I laughed at his stupidity, and bewitched him for it in earnest. I was young and pretty then!
He died in a year, and Satan sat on his grave in the shape of a black cat until his friends set a cross over it. I like to be a woman, I do, it is so easy to be wicked, and so nice! I always tell the girls that, and they give me twice as much as if I had told them to be good and nice, as they call it! Pshaw! Nice! If only men knew us as we really are!"
"Well, I do not like women, Mere Malheur," replied La Corriveau;
"they sneer at you and me and call us witch and sorceress, and they will lie, steal, kill, and do worse themselves for the sake of one man to-day, and cast him off for sake of another to-morrow! Wise Solomon found only one good woman in a thousand; the wisest man now finds not one in a worldful! It were better all of us were dead, Mere Malheur; but pour me out a glass of wine, for I am tired of tramping in the dark to the house of that gay lady I told you of."
Mere Malheur poured out a glass of choice Beaume from a dame-jeanne which she had received from a roguish sailor, who had stolen it from his ship.
"But you have not told me who she is, Dame Dodier," replied Mere Malheur, refilling the glass of La Corriveau.
"Nor will I yet. She is fit to be your mistress and mine, whoever she is; but I shall not go again to see her."
And La Corriveau did not again visit the house of Angelique. She had received from her precise information respecting the movements of the Intendant. He had gone to the Trois Rivieres on urgent affairs, and might be absent for a week.
Angelique had received from Varin, in reply to her eager question for news, a short, falsified account of the proceedings in the Council relative to Caroline and of Bigot's indignant denial of all knowledge of her.
Varin, as a member of the Council, dared not reveal the truth, but would give his familiars half-hints, or tell to others elaborate lies, when pressed for information. He did not, in this case, even hint at the fact that a search was to be made for Caroline. Had he done so, Angelique would herself have given secret information to the Governor to order the search of Beaumanoir, and thus got her rival out of the way without trouble, risk, or crime.
But it was not to be. The little word that would have set her active spirit on fire to aid in the search for Caroline was not spoken, and her thoughts remained immovably fixed upon her death.