her jaunty air; with the masses of hair
twisted in coils around her head, her masculine forehead and her red
lips curling with that same ferocious smile which Eugene Delacroix and
David (of Angers) caught and represented so admirably. True image of the
People, this fiery and swarthy creature seemed to emit revolt through
her piercing yellow eyes, blazing with the insolence of a soldier. She
inherited from her father so violent a nature that the whole family,
except Tonsard, and all who frequented the tavern feared her.

"Well, how are you now?" she said to La Pechina as the latter recovered
consciousness.

Catherine had placed her victim on a little mound beside the brook and
was bringing her to her senses with dashes of cold water. "Where am I?"
said the child, opening her beautiful black eyes through which a sun-ray
seemed to glide.

"Ah!" said Catherine, "if it hadn't been for me you'd have been killed."

"Thank you," said the girl, still bewildered; "what happened to me?"

"You stumbled over a root and fell flat in the road over there, as if
shot. Ha! how you did run!"

"It was your brother who made me," said La Pechina, remembering Nicolas.

"My brother? I did not see him," said Catherine. "What did he do to you,
poor fellow, that should make you fly as if he were a wolf? Isn't he
handsomer than your Monsieur Michaud?"

"Oh!" said the girl, contemptuously.

"See here, little one; you are laying up a crop of evils for yourself by
loving those who persecute us. Why don't you keep to our side?"

"Why don't you come to church; and why do you steal things night and
day?" asked the child.

"So you let those people talk you over!" sneered Catherine. "They love
us, don't they?--just as they love their food which they get out of us,
and they want new dishes every day. Did you ever know one of them to
marry a peasant-girl? Not they! Does Sarcus the rich let his son marry
that handsome Gatienne Giboulard? Not he, though she is the daughter of
a rich upholsterer. You have never been at the Tivoli ball at Soulanges
in Socquard's tavern; you had better come. You'll see 'em all there,
these bourgeois fellows, and you'll find they are not worth the money we
shall get out of them when we've pulled them down. Come to the fair this
year!"

"They say it's fine, that Soulanges fair!" cried La Pechina, artlessly.

"I'll tell you what it is in two words," said Catherine. "If you are
handsome, you are well ogled. What is th