The Thibaults Read Online Free Page A

“A nice long sleep, and when we wake up we’ll be quite well again, and our big brother will be back at home.”
    She looked at him. Never afterwards could he forget all that he read at that instant in her gaze: an inner life quite out of keeping with her years, such indifference towards all human consolation, and a distress so deep, so desperately lonely, that he could not help being shaken by it and lowered his eyes.
    “You were right,” he said to Mme. de Fontanin, when they had returned to the drawing-room. “That child is innocence itself. She’s suffering terribly, but she knows nothing.”
    “Yes,” she replied in a musing tone, “she is innocence itself; but— she knows !”
    “You mean …?”
    “Yes.”
    “How can you think that? Surely her answers …?”
    “Her answers?” she repeated in a slow, meditative voice. “But I was near her and I felt it somehow. No, I can’t explain it.” She sat down, but stood up again at once. Her face was anguished. “She knows, she knows—now I’m certain of it.” Then suddenly, in a louder voice: “And I’m certain, too, that she would rather die than betray her secret.”

    After Antoine had left and before going to see M. Quillard, the principal of the lycée (as Antoine had advised her to do), Mme. de Fontanin yielded to her curiosity and opened a Who’s Who .

THIBAULT (Oscar-Marie). Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Sometime Member for the Eure. Vice-president of the Child Welfare Society. Founder and President of the Social Defence League. Treasurer of the Joint Committee of Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Paris. Residence: 4A Rue de l’Université, Paris VI.

III

    TWO HOURS later, after her interview with the principal of the lycée, whom she had left abruptly, without a word, her cheeks aflame, Mme. de Fontanin, not knowing where to turn, decided to go and see M. Thibault. Some secret instinct warned her against the visit, but she overruled it, as she often overruled such premonitions—prompted by a fondness for taking risks and a temperamental wilfulness that she mistook for courage.
    At the Thibaults’ a regular family council was in session. The Abbé Binot had arrived at the Rue de l’Université at an early hour, but only a few minutes in advance of the Abbé Vécard, private secretary to His Grace the Archbishop of Paris. This priest was M. Thibault’s confessor, and a great friend of the family. A telephone-call had secured his attendance.
    Seated at his desk, M. Thibault had the air of a presiding judge. He had slept badly and the unhealthy pallor of his cheeks was even more pronounced than usual. M. Chasle, his secretary, a grey-haired, bespectacled little man, was seated on his employer’s left. Antoine alone had remained standing, leaning against a bookcase. Mademoiselle, too, had been convoked, though it was the hour when normally she attended to her housekeeping. Her shoulders draped in black merino, she sat perched on the edge of her chair, silently observing the proceedings. Under the coils of grey hair looped round her yellow forehead the fawn-like eyes strayed constantly from one priest to the other. The two reverend gentlemen had been installed on either side of the fireplace, in high-backed chairs.
    After laying before them the results of Antoine’s inquiries M. Thibault launched into a jeremiad. He liked to feel that he was being approved of by those around him, and the words that came to him, when depicting his anxiety, quickened his emotions. But the presence of his confessor urged him to examine his conscience once again; had he fulfilled all his duties as a father towards the miserable boy? He hardly knew what to answer. Then his thoughts took a new turn: but for that wretched little heretic nothing would have happened.
    Rising to his feet, he gave rein to his indignation. “Should not young blackguards like that Fontanin boy be locked up in suitable institutions? Are we to allow our children to be exposed to