THE LITTLE CHILD WHO CRIED IN VOLUME SECOND.
On the day after that in which these events occurred in the house on
the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, a lad, who apparently came from the bridge
of Austerlitz, was trudging along the right-hand walk in the direction
of the Barrière de Fontainebleau, at about nightfall. This boy was
pale, thin, dressed in rags, wearing canvas trousers in the month of
February, and singing at the top of his lungs. At the corner of the Rue
du Petit Banquier an old woman was stooping down and fumbling in a pile
of rubbish by the lamplight; the lad ran against her as he passed, and
fell back, with the exclamation,--
"My eye! why, I took that for an enormous, an enormous dog!"
He uttered the word _enormous_ the second time with a sonorous twang
which might be expressed by capitals,--"an enormous, an ENORMOUS dog."
The old woman drew herself up furiously.
"You young devil!" she growled, "if I had not been stooping, I know
where my foot would have been now."
The lad was already some distance off.
"Kisss! kisss!" he said; "after all, I may not have been mistaken."
The old woman, choked with indignation, drew herself up to her full
height, and the street lantern fully lit up her livid face, which was
hollowed by angles and wrinkles, and crow's-feet connecting the corners
of the mouth. The body was lost in the darkness, and her head alone
could be seen; she looked like a mask of Decrepitude lit up by a flash
darting through the night. The lad looked at her.
"Madame," he said, "yours is not the style of beauty which would suit
me."
He went his way, and began singing again,--
"Le Roi Coup de sabot
S'en allait à la chasse,
À la chasse aux corbeaux."
At the end of these three lines he broke off. He had reached No. 50-52,
and finding the gate closed, he began giving it re-echoing and heroic
kicks, which indicated rather the shoes of the man which he wore than
the feet of the boy which he had. By this time the same old woman whom
he had met at the corner of the Rue du Petit Banquier ran up after him,
uttering shouts, and making the most extraordinary gestures.
"What's the matter? what's the matter? O Lord to God! the gate is being
broken down, and the house broken into!"
The kicks continued, and the old woman puffed.
"Is that the way houses are treated at present?"
All at once she stopped, for she had recognized the gamin.
"Why, it is that Satan!"
"Hilloh! it's the old woman," said the boy. "Good evening, my dear
Burgonmuche, I have come to see my ancestors."
The old woman answered with a composite grimace, an admirable
improvisation of hatred deriving advantage from decrepitude and
ugliness, which was unfortunately lost in the darkness,--"There's
nobody here, scamp!"
"Nonsense," the boy said. "Where's father?"
"At La Force."
"Hilloh! and mother?"
"At St. Lazare."
"Very fine! and my sisters?"
"At the Madelonnettes."
The lad scratched the back of his ear, looked at Mame Bougon, and said,
"Ah!"
Then he turned on his heels, and a moment later the old woman, who was
standing in the gateway, heard him singing in his clear young voice, as
he went off under the elms which were quivering in the winter breeze,--
"Le Roi Coupdesabot
S'en allait à la chasse,
À la chasse aux corbeaux.
Monté sur des échasses,
Quand on passait dessous,
On lui payait deux sous."
END OF PART THIRD.