"Do not be angry, La Louve, but explain what you mean."
"Yesterday, in the workroom, I noticed you,--you bent your head over the work you were sewing, and a large tear fell on your hand. You looked at it for a minute, and then you lifted your hand to your lips, as if to kiss and wipe it away. Is this true?"
"Yes," said La Goualeuse, blushing.
"There was nothing in this; but at the moment you looked so unhappy, so very miserable, that I felt my very heart turned, as it were, inside out. Tell me, do you find this amusing? Why, now, I have been as hard as flint on all occasions. No one ever saw me shed a tear,--and yet, only looking at your chit face, I felt my heart sink basely within me! Yes, for this is baseness,--pure cowardice; and the proof is, that for three days I have not dared to write to Martial, my lover, my conscience is so bad. Yes, being with you has enfeebled my mind, and this must be put an end to,--there"s enough of it; this will else do me mischief, I am sure.
I wish to remain as I am, and not become a joke and despised thing to myself."
"You are angry with me, La Louve?"
"Yes, you are a bad acquaintance for me; and if it continues, why, in a fortnight"s time, instead of calling me the She-wolf, they would call me the Ewe! But no, thank ye, it sha"n"t come to that yet,--Martial would kill me; and so, to make an end of this matter, I will break up all acquaintance with you; and that I may be quite separated from you, I shall ask to be put in another room. If they refuse me, I will do some piece of mischief to put me in wind again, and that I may be sent to the black-hole for the remainder of my time here. And this was what I had to say to you, Goualeuse."
Timidly taking her companion"s hand, who looked at her with gloomy distrust, Fleur-de-Marie said:
"I am sure, La Louve, that you take an interest in me, not because you are cowardly, but because you are generous-hearted. Brave hearts are the only ones which sympathise in the misfortunes of others."
"There is neither generosity nor courage in it," said La Louve, coa.r.s.ely; "it is downright cowardice. Besides, I don"t choose to have it said that I sympathise with any one. It ain"t true."
"Then I will not say so, La Louve; but since you have taken an interest in me, you will let me feel grateful to you, will you not?"
"Oh, if you like! This evening, I shall be in another room than yours, or alone in the dark hole, and I shall soon be out, thank G.o.d!"
"And where shall you go when you leave here?"
"Why, home, to be sure, to the Rue Pierre-Lescat. I have my furniture there."
"And Martial?" said La Goualeuse, who hoped to keep up the conversation with La Louve, by interesting her in what she most cared for; "shall you be glad to see him again?"
"Yes, oh, yes!" she replied, with a pa.s.sionate air. "When I was taken up, he was just recovering from an illness,--a fever which he had from being always in the water. For seventeen days and seventeen nights I never left him for a moment, and I sold half my kit in order to pay the doctor, the drags and all. I may boast of that, and I do boast of it. If my man lives, it is I who saved him. Yesterday I burnt another candle for him. It is folly,--a mere whim,--but yet it is all one, and we have sometimes very good effects in burning candles for a person"s recovery."
"And, Martial, where is he now? What is he doing?"
"He is still on an island, near the bridge, at Asnieres."
"On an island?"
"Yes, he is settled there, with his family, in a lone house. He is always at loggerheads with the persons who protect the fishing; but when he is once in his boat, with his double-barrelled gun, why, they who approach him had better look out!" said La Louve, proudly.
"What, then, is his occupation?"
"He poaches in the night; and then, as he is as bold as a lion, when some coward wishes to get up a quarrel with another, why, he will lend his hand."
"Where did you first know Martial?"
"At Paris. He wished to be a locksmith,--a capital business,--always with red-hot iron and fire around you; dangerous you may suppose, but then that suited him. But he, like me, was badly disposed, and could not agree with his master; and then, too, they were always throwing his father and one of his brothers in his teeth. But that"s nothing to you.
The end of it was, that he returned to his mother, who is a very devil in sin and wickedness, and began to poach on the river. He cannot see me at Paris, and in the daytime I go to see him in his island, the Ile du Ravageur, near Asnieres. It"s very near; though if it were farther off, I would go all the same, even if I went on my hands and knees, or swam all the way, for I can swim like an otter."
"You must be very happy to go into the country," said La Goualeuse, with a sigh; "especially if you are as fond as I am of walking in the fields."
"I prefer walking in the woods and large forests with my man."
"In the forests! Oh, ain"t you afraid?"
"Afraid! Oh, yes, afraid! I should think so! What can a she-wolf fear?
The thicker and more lonely the forest, the better I should like it. A lone hut in which I should live with Martial as a poacher, to go with him at night to set the snares for the game, and then, if the keepers came to apprehend us, to fire at them, both of us, whilst my man and I were hid in underwood,--ah, that would indeed be happiness!"
"Then you have lived in the woods, La Louve?"
"Never."
"Who gave you these ideas, then?"
"Martial."
"How did he acquire them?"
"He was a poacher in the forest of Rambouillet; and it is not a year ago that he was supposed to have fired at a keeper who had fired at him, the vagabond! However, there was no proof of the fact, but Martial was obliged to leave that part of the country. Then he came to Paris to try and be a locksmith, and then I first saw him. As he was too wild to be on good terms with his master, he preferred returning to his relations at Asnieres, and poach in the river; it is not so slavish. Still he always regrets the woods, and some day or other will return to them.
From his talking to me of poaching and forests, he has crammed my head with these ideas, and I now think that is the life I was born for. But it is always so. What your man likes, you like. If Martial had been a thief, I should have been a thief. When one has a man, we like to be like him."
"And where are your own relations, La Louve?"
"How should I know?"
"Is it long since you saw them?"
"I don"t know whether they are dead or alive."
"Were they, then, so very unkind to you?"
"Neither kind nor unkind. I was about eleven years old, I think, when my mother went off with a soldier. My father, who was a day-labourer, brought home a mistress with him into our garret, and two boys she had,--one six, and the other my own age. She was a barrow-woman. She went on pretty well at first, but after a time, whilst she was out with her fruit, a fish-woman used to come and drink with my father, and this the apple-woman found out. Then, from this time, every evening, we had such battles and rows in the house that I and the two boys were half dead with fright. We all three slept together, for we had but one room.
One day,--it was her birthday, Sainte Madeleine"s fete,--and she scolded him because he had not congratulated her on it. From one word another arose, and my father concluded by breaking her head with the handle of the broom. I really thought he had killed her. She fell like a lump of lead, but _la mere_ Madeleine was hard-lived, and hard-headed also.
After that she returned my father with interest all the blows he had given her, and once bit him so savagely in the hand that the piece of flesh remained between her teeth. I must say that these contests were what we may call the _grandes eaux_ at Versailles. On common and working-days the skirmishes were of a lighter sort,--there were bruises, but no blood."
"Was this woman unkind to you?"
"Mere Madeleine? No; on the contrary. She was a little hasty, but, otherwise, a good sort of woman enough. But at last my father got tired, and left her and the little furniture we had. He came out of Burgundy, and most probably returned to his own country. I was fifteen or sixteen at this time."
"And were you still with the old mistress of your father?"
"Where else should I be? Then she took up with a tiler, who came to lodge with us. Of the two boys of Mere Madeleine, one, the eldest, was drowned at the Ile des Cygnes, and the other went apprentice to a carpenter."
"And what did you do with this woman?"
"Oh, I helped to draw her barrow, made the soup, and carried her man his dinner; and when he came home drunk, which happened oftener than was his turn, I helped Mere Madeleine to keep him in order, for we still lived in the same apartment. He was as vicious as a sandy-haired donkey, when he was tipsy, and tried to kill us. Once, if we had not s.n.a.t.c.hed his axe from him, he would certainly have murdered us both. Mere Madeleine had a cut on the shoulder, which bled till the room looked like a slaughter-house."
"And how did you become--what--we--are?" said Fleur-de-Marie, hesitatingly.
"Why, little Charley, Madeleine"s son, who was afterwards drowned at the Ile des Cygnes, was my first lover, almost from the time when he, his mother, and his brother, came to lodge with us when we were but mere children; after him the tiler was my lover, who threatened else to turn me out-of-doors. I was afraid that Mere Madeleine would also send me away if she discovered anything. She did, however; but as she was really a good creature, she said, "As it is so, and you are sixteen years old, and fit for nothing, for you are too self-willed to take a situation or learn a business, you shall go with me and be inscribed in the police-books; as you have no relations, I will answer for you, as I brought you up, as one may say; and that will give you a position authorised by the government, and you will have nothing to do but to be merry and dress smart. I shall have no uneasiness about you, and you will no longer be a charge to me. What do you say to it, my girl?" "Why, I think indeed you are right," was my answer; "I had not thought of that." Well, we went to the Bureau des Moeurs. She answered for me, in the usual way, and from that time I was _inscrite_. I met Mere Madeleine a year afterwards. I was drinking with my man, and we asked her to join us, and she told us that the tiler had been sentenced to the galleys.