Mysteries of Paris Volume II Part 68

"Can any one answer for the words of a child? at Paris, above all, where people are so curious and talkative? It is as much to keep them silent as to aid us that I wish to keep them here."

"Do they not go to the village and to Paris now? Who prevents them from speaking, if they wish to speak? If they were far away from here, so much the better: what they might say would be of no consequence."

"Far from here! and where is that?" said the widow, looking steadily at her son.

"Let me take them away; no consequence to you."

"How would you live?"

"My old master, the locksmith, is a good man. I will tell him what is necessary, and perhaps he will lend me something on account of the children; with that I'll go and bind them out far away from this. We set out in two days, and you will never hear more of us."

"No; I prefer to have them with me. I shall be more sure of them."

"Then I establish myself to-morrow at the hovel, waiting for something better. I have a head also, and you know it."

"Yes, I know it. Oh, how I wish to see you far away from this! Why did you not stay in your woods?"

"I offer to rid you both of myself and the children."

"You would leave La Louve, then--she whom you love so well?"

"That's my business: I know what I have to do; I have a plan."

"If I let you take them away, will you never return to Paris?"

"In three days we will be off, and like the dead for you."

"I prefer to have it so, rather than you should always be here, and be suspicious of them. Come, since it must be so, take them away, and clear out as soon as possible, that I may never see you again."

"Is this settled?"

"It is. Give me the key of the cellar, so that I can release Nicholas."

"No he can sleep off his wine there."

"And Calabash?"

"It is different. You can open the door after I have gone to bed; it makes me feel bad to see her."

"Go; and may the devil confound you!"

"Is it your good-night, mother?"

"Yes."

"Happily, it will be the last," said Martial.

"The last," replied the widow.

Her son lighted a candle, and, opening the kitchen door, whistled to his dog, which came bounding in, and followed his master to the upper story of the mansion.

"Go! your account is finished," muttered the mother, shaking her fist at her son, who had just gone upstairs, "you have brought it upon yourself." Then, a.s.sisted by Calabash, who went to look for a bunch of false keys, the widow picked the lock of the cellar where Nicholas was confined, and set him at liberty.

CHAPTER XXIV.

FRANCOIS AND AMANDINE.

Francois and Amandine slept in a room situated immediately over the kitchen, at the extremity of a corridor, into which opened several other rooms, serving as private dining-rooms to the frequenters of the tavern. After having partaken of their frugal supper, instead of extinguishing their lantern, according to the orders of the widow, the two children had watched, leaving their door open, to see Martial when he should come to his room. Placed on a rickety stool, the lantern shed a sickly light through the miserable room. Walls of plaster, a cot for Francois, a child's bedstead, very old, and much too short for Amandine, a heap of broken chairs and benches, the result of some of the drunken brawls and turbulent conduct which had taken place at the tavern; such was the interior of this den.

Amandine, seated on the edge of the cot, tried to dress her head with the stolen gift of her brother Nicholas, Francois, kneeling, presented a fragment of looking-gla.s.s to his sister, who, with her head half-turned round, was occupied in tying the ends of the silk into a large rosette. Very attentive, and very much struck with this coiffure, Francois neglected for a moment to hold the gla.s.s in such a position that his sister could see. "Raise the gla.s.s higher now--I cannot see; there--so--good. Wait a little; now I have finished. Look! how do you think it looks?"

"Oh, very well--very well! What a fine tie! You'll make one just like it with my cravat, won't you?"

"Yes, directly; but let me walk a little. You go before--backward; hold the gla.s.s up so that I can see myself as I walk." Francois executed this difficult maneuver very well, to the great satisfaction of Amandine, who strutted up and down triumphantly, under the rosette and ears of her _foulard._ Very innocent under any other circ.u.mstances, this conduct become culpable, as Francois and Amandine both knew the prize was stolen; another proof of the frightful facility with which children, even well endowed, are corrupted almost without knowing it, when they are continually plunged in a criminal atmosphere.

And, besides, the sole mentor of these little unfortunates, their brother Martial, was not himself irreproachable, as we have said: incapable of committing a theft or murder, he did not the less lead an irregular and wandering life. They refused to commit certain bad actions, not from honesty, but to obey Martial, whom they tenderly loved, and to disobey their mother, whom they feared and hated. It is hard to say how much the perceptions of morality with these children were doubtful, vacillating, precarious; with Francois particularly, arrived at that dangerous period where the mind, hesitating, undecided between good and evil, perhaps in one moment may be lost or saved.

"How this red becomes you, sister!" said Francois. "How pretty it is!

When we go and play on the sh.o.r.e in front of the plaster-kilns, you must dress yourself so, to make the children wild, who are always throwing stones at us and calling us little _guillotines._ I'll put on my fine red cravat, and we will tell them, 'Never mind, you haven't such handsome handkerchiefs as these.'"

"But I say, Francois," said Amandine, after a pause, "if they knew that they were stolen, they would call us little thieves."

"Who cares if they do?"

"When it is not true, it's all the same; but now--"

"Since Nicholas has given us these, we have not stolen them."

"Yes, but he did; he took them from a boat; and brother Martial says we must not steal."

"But since Nicholas has stolen them, it is none of our business."

"You think so, Francois?"

"Yes, I do."

"Yet it seems to me that I should have preferred that the person to whom they belonged should have given them to us. Don't you think so, Francois?"

"Oh, it's all the same to me. They have been given to us, and that's enough."

"You are very sure?"

"Why, yes, yes; do be quiet."

"Then, so much the better; we have not done what brother Martial forbids, and we have fine handkerchiefs."