"
"Look here, Jeanne, there are folks condemned to ten years' imprisonment,
who would not have done like your husband; at least, they only despoil
strangers."
"At bottom he is not wicked, look you; it is bad company at the taverns
which has ruined him."
"Yes, he would not harm a child; but to a grown person it is different."
"What would you have? One must take life as it comes. At least, my husband
gone, I had no longer any fear of being lamed by any blow. I took fresh
courage. Not having anything to purchase a mattress with, for before all
one must eat and pay rent, and my poor daughter Catherine and myself could
hardly earn together forty sous a day, my two other children being too
young to work--for want of a mattress we slept upon a straw bed, made with
straw that we picked up at the door of a packer in our street."
"And I have squandered my earnings!"
"How could you know my trouble, since I did not tell you? Well, we doubled
our work, Catherine and I. Poor child, if you knew how virtuous, and
industrious, and good she is! always with her eyes on mine to know what I
wish her to do; never a complaint, and yet--she has already seen so much
misery, although only fifteen! Ah, it is a great consolation, Fortune to
have such a child," said Jeanne, wiping her eyes.
"It is just your own picture, I see; you should have this consolation, at
least."
"I assure you that it is more on her account that I complain than on my
own; for, do you see, the last two months she has not stopped working for a
moment; once every week she goes out to wash at the boats near the Pont-au
Change, at three sous the hour, the few clothes my husband left us: all the
rest of the time at the stake like a poor dog.
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