Lesage watched from the shadows as Madame Picot embraced her son. He had seen terrible acts performed by terrible people. Black masses, executions and murders, brutal fights in the galleys. And he had been present, of course, when Catherine and Abbé Guibourg had sacrificed babies and chanted dreadful incantations over the bodies so that Madame de Montespan might win the favour of the King.
But this seemed so much worse because Madame Picot had hitherto seemed so innocent. The blood on her hands and clothes, the blood-soaked bundle on the bed. What had the woman done? People were capable of all sorts of inexplicable things, weren’t they? Horrified, he fumbled his way down the dark stairs, across the courtyard and into the street, where he ran into the troubadour girl, Marguerite, coming the other way.
‘Good evening, monsieur,’ she said. ‘Have you been to see Madame Picot? Did her son return?’
Lesage nodded. Then, without a word, he fled.