y. When she had handed him the five-franc piece which
Mathieu, as a rule, left with her for this purpose, the young rascal
was not content, but began searching for more. At times he made his
appearance in a wild, haggard state, declaring that he should certainly
be sent to prison that evening if he did not secure ten francs, and
talking the while of smashing everything in the room or else of carrying
off the little clock in order to sell it. And it was then necessary for
Cecile to intervene and turn him out of the place; for, however puny
she might be, she had a brave heart. But if he went off it was only to
return a few days later with fresh demands, threatening that he would
shout his story to everybody on the stairs if the ten francs were not
given to him. One day, when his mother had no money in the place and
began to weep, he talked of ripping up the mattress, where, said he, she
probably kept her hoard. Briefly, the sisters' little home was becoming
a perfect hell.

The greatest misfortune of all, however, was that in the Rue de la
Federation Alexandre made the acquaintance of Alfred, Norine's youngest
brother, the last born of the Moineaud family. He was then twenty,
and thus two years the senior of his nephew. No worse prowler than he
existed. He was the genuine rough, with pale, beardless face, blinking
eyes, and twisted mouth, the real gutter-weed that sprouts up amid the
Parisian manure-heaps. At seven years of age he robbed his sisters,
beating Cecile every Saturday in order to tear her earnings from her.
Mother Moineaud, worn out with hard work and unable to exercise a
constant watch over him, had never managed to make him attend school
regularly, or to keep him in apprenticeship. He exasperated her to such
a degree that she herself ended by turning him into the streets in order
to secure a little peace and quietness at home. His big brothers kicked
him about, his father was at work from morning till evening, and the
child, thus morally a waif, grew up out of doors for a career of vice
and crime among the swarms of lads and girls of his age, who all rotted
there together like apples fallen on the ground. And as Alfred grew he
became yet more corrupt; he was like the sacrificed surplus of a poor
man's family, the surplus poured into the gutter, the spoilt fruit which
spoils all that comes into contact with it.

Like Alexandre, too, he nowadays only lived chancewise, and it was not
even known where he had be