lready!--The
child works sixteen hours a day at embroidering costly pieces for the
silk merchants, and earns sixteen sous a day--one sou an hour!--and
feeds like the Irish, on potatoes fried in rats' dripping, with bread
five times a week--and drinks canal water out of the town pipes, because
the Seine water costs too much; and she cannot set up on her own account
for lack of six or seven thousand francs. Your wife and children bore
you to death, don't they?--Besides, one cannot submit to be nobody where
one has been a little Almighty. A father who has neither money nor honor
can only be stuffed and kept in a glass case."

The Baron could not help smiling at these abominable jests.

"Well, now, Bijou is to come to-morrow morning to bring me an
embroidered wrapper, a gem! It has taken six months to make; no one
else will have any stuff like it! Bijou is very fond of me; I give her
tidbits and my old gowns. And I send orders for bread and meat and wood
to the family, who would break the shin-bones of the first comer if I
bid them.--I try to do a little good. Ah! I know what I endured from
hunger myself!--Bijou has confided to me all her little sorrows. There
is the making of a super at the Ambigu-Comique in that child. Her dream
is to wear fine dresses like mine; above all, to ride in a carriage.
I shall say to her, 'Look here, little one, would you like to have
a friend of--' How old are you?" she asked, interrupting herself.
"Seventy-two?"

"I have given up counting."

"'Would you like an old gentleman of seventy-two?' I shall say. 'Very
clean and neat, and who does not take snuff, who is as sound as a
bell, and as good as a young man? He will marry you (in the Thirteenth
Arrondissement) and be very kind to you; he will place seven thousand
francs in your account, and furnish you a room all in mahogany, and if
you are good, he will sometimes take you to the play. He will give you
a hundred francs a month for pocket-money, and fifty francs for
housekeeping.'--I know Bijou; she is myself at fourteen. I jumped for
joy when that horrible Crevel made me his atrocious offers. Well, and
you, old man, will be disposed of for three years. She is a good child,
well behaved; for three or four years she will have her illusions--not
for longer."

Hulot did not hesitate; he had made up his mind to refuse; but to
seem grateful to the kind-hearted singer, who was benevolent after her
lights, he affected to hesitate between vice a