and her palms over her ears.
Get that baby down here, come on!
Hurry up, Mary Jane!
The cow’s gruff voice continued;
she knew the girl’s name.
The night passed in the animals’ warmth that fed Jean Baptiste and the young Mary Jane.
It fed them like puppies of the she-wolf, with the same udders of a same, single mother.
Warming them in that warmth much more than family.
That warmth called: Mother Nature!
They slept on the cows’ bellies and their huge and warm udders.
They fell asleep together,
like two newborn calves.
So that white night just before
Christmas, spent in the animal warmth and
under the starlight, it marked as a line drawn on the ground, like a street in the snow, the new life and the living path of the two innocent little hearts.
The Moon, enlightened for a quarter,
came out to a split in the stable wood, on the side where the two children were sleeping. Its clear light, like a comet star, radiated their redemptive faces.
Christmas was by now!
But the animals did not seem very interested. For them, the next morning,
it would be one morning like every other one, with the usual things of all time.
2
Meanwhile, in the luxurious Ladurée House.
Little Mary Jane’s Missing family former home, now owned by her mother’s stepsister and now adoptive stepmother... That is: Madame Tussauds,
the Gendarmerie had come,
commanded by Commissioner C. Monet.
What a something' to happen to me, a few days before Christmas,
Oh my God!
What are the neighbors going to think? What will they say about this absurd story? Damnable!
The wicked and sour Madame Tussauds, was babbling and begging loudly
to be heard by Commissioner Monet
and by Reverend Dumas.
Do you have any idea, Madame, where the children could've gone to find refuge?
Does Mary Jane have friends or relatives where she might be hiding?
Commissioner C. Monet
asked with a blank look on his face,
as if he were following one of his thoughts.
No, I have no idea! The little girl has no family or friends in the world!
Nobody’s going to stand that ungrateful little brat! If it weren’t for her poor unfortunate mother!
Madame Tussauds sighed continuing her painful recitation. Then she slowly started to talk again.
Ah! I’m too kind-hearted... I should have left her at the orphanage!
So she would have learned what
the hand feeding you means.
Then? Mary Jane is not your daughter; and whose? If I may ask?
the Commissioner inquired, attentively, following the movements of all
in the room around him.
She is the daughter of my stepsister and her husband, the infamous Count Ladurée.
My sister died of a strange and unknown debilitating illness.
Her beauty faded day by day,
she slowly went out,
as if carried away by the wind.
About the Count, I guess, you well know
the story of his diabolical madness.
The Little Girl was brought to the orphanage.
I still did not live here and when I came back, I immediately had the good heart to take the baby with me.
Madame Tussauds said, while Reverend Dumas nodded with his hands clasped in a monotonous prayer.
I'm not completely informed about this nasty story, please Madame, would you tell it to me?
And so saying the commissioner C. Monet
moved his chair and sat in wait
to hear this strange story.
- It all began with the slow death
of my adoptive stepsister.
The Count had gone a little mad, he began
doing strange and meaningless things.
He did not want to bury his great love,
he embalmed her, saying that he would keep her close forever.
I remember that in those days the Count was as crazy or invaded, perhaps demeaned or who knows what.
He was studying all day and all nights,
then he wrote; he wrote millions of formulas
which for me have no meaning.
Oh! But me, Commissioner, I am a smart woman and I understand things.
I know what the Count was studying! He was studying
the Magic... The Dark Magic, Commissioner!
More and more the Count Ladurée
lived in a straight-up fantasyland,
an impalpable world made up of visions.
He talked to his wife, as if she was still alive, but she was motionless, embalmed, a stuffed puppet! He talked to plants and animals! He no longer talked to people! He didn’t say any other word! He didn't say a word!
We are one of the wealthiest families in Paris, Mr. Monet, and we cannot afford certain rumors on our behalf.
We can’t! It’s trashy!
Oh! But me... I am a woman of high society, of great nobility and I know well certain things! So, I took my fur and my puppy dressed for the occasion and went to Reverend Dumas to denounce the facts and confess everything to God!
Then I went to the police with Count Ladurée’s documents and denounced him for his magic rituals and his heresies.
Thus, Count Ladurée had to take all of his stuff and run away from Paris, otherwise people would pilloried him as a heretic and / or Satan's follower!
Reading through his things I think he has fled to some distant or exotic country,
bringing the embalmed body of his beloved wife with him.
So he disappeared in a flash leaving their only beautiful daughter
in a shelter for orphans.
My adoption papers are all in the parish of Reverend Dumas.
Anyway,
what Count Ladurée left before escape his properly punishment, is all in his office; you can visit it whenever you want!
I left it as it was to facilitate the course of the investigation and now it is still as it was at the time.
Madame Tussauds said looking at
Dumas