had laid him there. When he was found
he was already a fine little fellow of two or three years of age,
very plump and merry, but so backward and dense that he could scarcely
stammer a few words, and only seemed able to smile. When one of the
vegetable saleswomen found him lying under the big white cabbage she
raised such a loud cry of surprise that her neighbours rushed up to
see what was the matter, while the youngster, still in petticoats, and
wrapped in a scrap of old blanket, held out his arms towards her.
He could not tell who his mother was, but opened his eyes in wide
astonishment as he squeezed against the shoulder of a stout tripe dealer
who eventually took him up. The whole market busied itself about him
throughout the day. He soon recovered confidence, ate slices of bread
and butter, and smiled at all the women. The stout tripe dealer kept him
for a time, then a neighbour took him; and a month later a third woman
gave him shelter. When they asked him where his mother was, he waved his
little hand with a pretty gesture which embraced all the women present.
He became the adopted child of the place, always clinging to the skirts
of one or another of the women, and always finding a corner of a bed and
a share of a meal somewhere. Somehow, too, he managed to find clothes,
and he even had a copper or two at the bottom of his ragged pockets. It
was a buxom, ruddy girl dealing in medicinal herbs who gave him the name
of Marjolin,[*] though no one knew why.

[*] Literally "Marjoram."

When Marjolin was nearly four years of age, old Mother Chantemesse also
happened to find a child, a little girl, lying on the footway of the Rue
Saint Denis, near the corner of the market. Judging by the little one's
size, she seemed to be a couple of years old, but she could already
chatter like a magpie, murdering her words in an incessant childish
babble. Old Mother Chantemesse after a time gathered that her name was
Cadine, and that on the previous evening her mother had left her sitting
on a doorstep, with instructions to wait till she returned. The child
had fallen asleep there, and did not cry. She related that she was
beaten at home; and she gladly followed Mother Chantemesse, seemingly
quite enchanted with that huge square, where there were so many people
and such piles of vegetables. Mother Chantemesse, a retail dealer by
trade, was a crusty but very worthy woman, approaching her sixtieth
year. She was extremely fond of chil