hich do not bear being mentioned. Her childhood might be her
excuse, if she could be excused at all.

"Her mother was one of those unfortunate women of whom Paris devours
every year several thousands; who come from the provinces in wooden
shoes, and are seen, six months later, dressed in all the fashion; and
who live a short, gay life, which invariably ends in the hospital.

"Her mother was neither better nor worse than the rest. When her
daughter came, she had neither the sense to part with her, nor the
courage--perhaps (who knows?) she had not the means--to mend her ways.
Thus the little one grew up by God's mercy, but at the Devil's bidding,
living by chance, now stuffed with sweet things, and now half-killed by
blows, fed by the charity of neighbors, while her mother remained for
weeks absent from her lodgings.

"Four years old, she wandered through the neighborhood dressed in
fragments of silk or velvet, with a faded ribbon in her hair, but
with bare feet in her torn shoes, hoarse, and shivering with severe
colds,--very much after the fashion of lost dogs, who rove around
open-air cooking-shops,--and looking in the gutters for cents with which
to buy fried potatoes or spoilt fruit.

"At a later time she extended the circle of her excursions, and wandered
all over Paris, in company of other children like herself, stopping
on the boulevards, before the brilliant shops or performing jugglers,
trying to learn how to steal from open stalls, and at night asking in a
plaintive voice for alms in behalf of her poor sick father. When twelve
years old she was as thin as a plank, and as green as a June apple, with
sharp elbows and long red hands. But she had beautiful light hair, teeth
like a young dog's, and large, impudent eyes. Merely upon seeing her go
along, her head high with an air of saucy indifference, coquettish under
her rags, and walking with elastic steps, you would have guessed in
her the young Parisian girl, the sister of the poor 'gamin,' a thousand
times more wicked than her brothers, and far more dangerous to society.
She was as depraved as the worst of sinners, fearing neither God nor the
Devil, nor man, nor anything.

"However, she did fear the police.

"For from them she derived the only notions of morality she ever
possessed; otherwise, it would have been love's labor lost to talk to
her of virtue or of duty. These words would have conveyed no meaning
to her imagination; she knew no more about them