Therese's Failed Attempt to Rescue Rosalie is a failed rescue that lays bare Rodin and Rombeau's plan to kill Rosalie under the pretext of scientific advancement. Therese finds her friend hidden in a cellar, but when she tries to free her, the men catch them. Rosalie remains in their power; Therese is branded and abandoned at the edge of a forest, left to flee without knowing what will happen to the girl she tried to save.

Causes and Background

Therese has come to fear for Rosalie, Rodin's daughter and the young woman to whom she is devoted, because Rosalie is exposed to continuing danger in her father's household. Therese has urged her to escape, believing that removing her from Rodin's control is less dangerous than leaving her there. Before that effort can succeed, Rosalie disappears. Rodin says she has gone to spend the summer with a relative ten leagues away, and people in the neighborhood repeat that she left after bidding them farewell. Yet Therese doubts the account: Rosalie has departed without a word to her, and Rodin's character gives her reason to fear for her friend's safety.

The next day, while alone in the house, Therese searches it carefully. She hears sounds from a secluded cellar, where firewood blocks a narrow door. Behind it, she finds Rosalie imprisoned. Rosalie explains that Rombeau, Rodin's friend and colleague, had examined her before the disappearance, and that Rodin had ordered her to submit to further abuse by him. After the two men had kept her for hours, Rodin arranged a false departure: Rosalie crossed through town under an old woman's guardianship and bade acquaintances farewell, but after nightfall her conductress brought her back. Rodin then seized her, silenced her, and confined her in the cellar.

Rosalie fears that the men intend to use her in an experiment. She does not know where the cellar key is kept, and Therese cannot find it before she must return upstairs. Therese promises to come back the following day; if she has learned nothing that can help Rosalie, she will leave the house, fetch the police, and try to free her by any means. The promise makes the next discovery more urgent: the threat is not merely imprisonment but a planned killing.

The Plan Revealed

That evening, Therese hides near the dining room while Rodin and Rombeau eat together. Their conversation confirms her fears. They discuss killing a girl around fourteen or fifteen and examining her body after a violent death, claiming that only such an experiment could produce anatomical knowledge they could not obtain otherwise. Rombeau argues that Rosalie is suitable for the proposed dissection; Rodin agrees, dismissing the fact that she is his daughter as no reason to spare her.

Rodin gives the project an impersonal rationale. He compares the intended killing to the sacrifices he claims are made under natural laws, and invokes historical customs and legal traditions to argue that fathers have possessed power over their children. His appeal to precedent does not restrain the violence; it converts it into an asserted right. Rombeau, meanwhile, presents the experiment as necessary because no other method could yield the desired information. Together, they recast murder as research and parental authority as permission to dispose of a child.

The dinner conversation also discloses a separate motive. Rodin says that Rosalie has served his pleasures for five years and that, having lost interest in her, he intends to end her life. His scientific argument therefore coexists with personal disgust and possessiveness. Therese hears enough to understand that the men mean to act that very night, and rushes back to the cellar to warn Rosalie and attempt her escape.

The Rescue and Its Reversal

Therese tries to batter down the cellar door. A blow dislodges an object, and she discovers that it is the key. She opens the door, embraces Rosalie, urges her to flee, and promises to follow. Rosalie springs toward the exit, but Rodin and Rombeau appear with the governess before she can get away. Rodin catches his daughter just beyond the cellar threshold; Rombeau seizes Therese.

Rodin accuses Therese of encouraging a daughter's escape from her father and calls her conduct espionage and seduction. Therese answers that rescuing Rosalie is justified because her father is plotting her death. The men drag both women back to the apartments and bolt the doors. They tie Rosalie to a bedpost, while the punishment they impose on Therese begins with a threat of a lethal experiment intended to observe her heart. The reversal is immediate: the key that briefly makes escape possible becomes the means by which the fugitives are caught at the threshold of freedom.

Branding, Abandonment, and Aftermath

Rodin stops Rombeau from proceeding with the threatened experiment, saying that their strength must be reserved for the operation planned for Rosalie. Instead, he decides to brand Therese with the mark used on thieves. He intends the mark, together with the accusations he can make against her, to expose her to disgrace, hunger, and possible execution. Rombeau holds her while Rodin applies the heated iron behind her shoulder. The men bandage and dress her, give her a little brandy, and take her out under cover of night.

At the edge of a forest, they abandon Therese and warn her about the dangers of making a complaint. She fears the consequences of accusing them, despite believing that she could prove they were criminals rather than officials of a tribunal. Her past experiences in Paris and at the Château de Madame de Bressac intensify that fear. What weighs on her most, however, is that she has left an innocent Rosalie with the men who intend to kill her. Therese sets out without direction; on the fourth day, she realizes that she has circled back only as far as Lieursaint. She then chooses the road toward the southern provinces, hoping to find peace farther from the places where she grew up, though her expectation of safety will prove mistaken.

Narrative Significance

The episode makes Therese's compassion the direct cause of her exposure to danger, while showing how easily power can disguise violence as accepted authority. Rodin and Rombeau invoke science, history, and paternal rights, but their justifications conceal a concrete plan to kill Rosalie, alongside Rodin's admission that he has simply tired of her. Their arguments do not establish moral legitimacy; they reveal the language by which the powerful excuse what they intend to do.

The rescue follows a sharp pattern of discovery and reversal: Rosalie's disappearance leads Therese to the cellar; the hidden conversation exposes the imminent threat; the recovered key opens the door; and the attempt to cross the threshold ends in capture. Therese's failure does not come from indifference or hesitation. She acts on what she learns, but the household's control defeats her effort and turns her into its next victim. Rosalie's fate remains unresolved in this episode, leaving Therese to travel onward with the burden of having escaped while her friend remains behind.