On the day following that on which these events took place in the house on the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, a child, who seemed to be coming from the direction of the bridge of Austerlitz, was ascending the side-alley on the right in the direction of the Barrière de Fontainebleau.
Night had fully come. This lad was pale, thin, clad in rags, with linen trousers in the month of February, and was singing at the top of his voice.
At the corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier, a bent old woman was rummaging in a heap of refuse by the light of a street lantern; the child jostled her as he passed, then recoiled, exclaiming:— 'Hello! And I took it for an enormous, enormous dog!
' He pronounced the word enormous the second time with a jeering swell of the voice which might be tolerably well represented by capitals: 'an enormous, ENORMOUS dog. ' The old woman straightened herself up in a fury. 'Nasty brat! ' she grumbled.
'If I hadn’t been bending over, I know well where I would have planted my foot on you. ' The boy was already far away. 'Kisss! kisss! ' he cried. 'After that, I don’t think I was mistaken!
' The old woman, choking with indignation, now rose completely upright, and the red gleam of the lantern fully lighted up her livid face, all hollowed into angles and wrinkles, with crow’s-feet meeting the corners of her mouth.
Her body was lost in the darkness, and only her head was visible. One would have pronounced her a mask of Decrepitude carved out by a light from the night. The boy surveyed her. 'Madame,' said he, 'does not possess that style of beauty which pleases me.
' He then pursued his road, and resumed his song:— 'Le roi Coupdesabot S’en allait à la