M. Roussillon had no children of his
own; so his kind heart opened freely to two fatherless and
motherless waifs. These were Alice, now called Alice Roussillon,
and the hunchback, Jean. The former was twelve years old, when he
adopted her, a child of Protestant parents, while Jean had been
taken, when a mere babe, after his parents had been killed and
scalped by Indians. Madame Roussillon, a professed invalid, whose
appetite never failed and whose motherly kindness expressed itself
most often through strains of monotonous falsetto scolding, was a
woman of little education and no refinement; while her husband
clung tenaciously to his love of books, especially to the romances
most in vogue when he took leave of France.
M. Roussillon had been, in a way, Alice's teacher, though not
greatly inclined to abet Father Beret in his kindly efforts to
make a Catholic of the girl, and most treacherously disposed
toward the good priest in the matter of his well-meant attempts to
prevent her from reading and re-reading the aforesaid romances.
But for many weeks past Gaspard Roussillon had been absent from
home, looking after his trading schemes with the Indians; and Pere
Beret acting on the suggestion of the proverb about the absent cat
and the playing mouse, had formed an alliance offensive and
defensive with Madame Roussillon, in which it was strictly
stipulated that all novels and romances were to be forcibly taken
and securely hidden away from Mademoiselle Alice; which, to the
best of Madame Roussillon's ability, had accordingly been done.
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