Rosalie’s imprisonment by her father

Rosalie’s imprisonment by her father begins with a disappearance explained away as an ordinary family departure and ends in a failed attempt at escape. Rodin tells the household that Rosalie has gone to stay with a relative, while in fact he has brought her back under guard and hidden her in a cellar. Thérèse discovers the deception, learns that Rodin and Rombeau may intend to kill Rosalie for an anatomical examination, and tries to get her out before their plan can be carried out. The episode makes the household’s cultivated appearance of order a cover for coercion, and gives Thérèse’s concern for Rosalie a concrete, dangerous purpose.

Disappearance and deception

Thérèse had already considered urging Rosalie to flee Rodin’s household because she feared what might happen to her there. Before she can bring that plan to fruition, Rosalie vanishes. Rodin and the household’s women say she has gone to spend the summer with a relative ten leagues away; people in the neighborhood repeat that she was seen leaving and that acquaintances had said farewell to her. The consistency of these accounts initially supplies a public appearance of normality, but does not convince Thérèse, who knows Rosalie’s affection for her and doubts that Rosalie would have left without a word.

When Thérèse asks Rodin why Rosalie’s departure was kept from her, he claims that it was meant to spare them both a distressing scene and assures her she will see Rosalie soon. Thérèse cannot verify the explanation, so she searches the house herself. The decisive clue is not a witness or a confession but a sound: she hears what may be moaning from a dark cellar. A narrow door at the end of a passage is blocked by firewood. Moving the obstruction, she approaches and hears a voice calling her by name. The concealed entrance makes the architecture part of the deception: Rosalie is not merely absent from the household but physically hidden within it.

What Rosalie reveals

Once Thérèse reaches her, Rosalie explains how Rodin arranged the disappearance. Before it, Rombeau had examined her, and Rodin had ordered her to submit to further abuse by his associate. When she resisted, Rodin himself handed her over to Rombeau. Afterward, the men discussed their plans while Rosalie remained in their power. Rodin then told her she would go to the country, ostensibly to visit family, and that she must leave without speaking to Thérèse.

The journey was staged. An old woman accompanied Rosalie out of town, where she said farewell to acquaintances; after nightfall, the conductress brought her back to her father’s house. Rodin was waiting. He silenced her and put her in the cellar. Although Rosalie says she has been adequately fed and looked after there, she has no freedom to leave and no knowledge of where the key is kept. The concealment of her location is therefore also a means of isolating her from anyone who might intervene.

Rosalie believes the danger goes beyond confinement. Rodin had led her to believe that he meant to marry her, and the examination by Rombeau had been presented as a way of determining whether she could bear a child. But Rosalie interprets the men’s conduct and what came before the examination as signs that they intend to use her in an experiment and that she may not survive it. Her fear is sharpened by the secrecy surrounding her removal: the promised family visit has become a false explanation for a return to captivity.

Thérèse’s attempted rescue

Thérèse searches for the cellar key but cannot find it before she has to return upstairs. She offers Rosalie what help she can: consolation, hope, and a promise to return the next day. If she has found no satisfactory way to free Rosalie by then, she says she will leave the house, fetch the police, and rescue her at any cost. The promise turns Thérèse’s suspicion into an explicit plan of intervention, though she does not yet have the means to carry it out.

That evening she overhears Rodin and Rombeau discussing the experiment they plan to perform on a young girl who has died a cruel death. Their conversation convinces her that Rosalie’s life is in immediate danger and that there is no time to wait. She rushes back to the cellar and makes repeated efforts to force the door. One blow dislodges something: the key. She opens the door, embraces Rosalie, and urges her to run, promising to follow.

Rosalie reaches the threshold, but Rodin and Rombeau appear with the governess and seize the opportunity to stop her. Rodin accuses Thérèse of encouraging his daughter’s flight and calls it the abduction of a daughter from her father. Thérèse answers that taking Rosalie away is necessary because her father is plotting against her life. The exchange lays bare the conflict between Rodin’s claim of paternal authority and Thérèse’s effort to protect Rosalie from that authority’s violence.

Consequences and significance

The escape attempt fails at the moment Rosalie is almost free. Rodin and Rombeau bring both women back into the apartments and bolt the doors. Rosalie is tied to a bedpost, while Thérèse is threatened with an experimental procedure of her own and subjected to further abuse. The attempted rescue thus brings retaliation upon Thérèse without securing Rosalie’s release; Rodin’s control over the house allows him to recast resistance as wrongdoing and punish those who expose his scheme.

The episode also establishes the pattern that will shape Thérèse’s experience in Rodin’s household: she sees the danger, gathers evidence by observation and listening, and acts to protect someone more vulnerable, but the men’s control of the premises and their power to impose their own version of events frustrate her effort. Rosalie’s imprisonment is concealed first by a plausible story of travel, then by a hidden room, and finally by Rodin’s accusation that the rescuer is the criminal. The reversal makes the household’s language of family and discipline serve as a shield for confinement and threatened murder.