Here she paused, fixed her dull eyes on Marius, and burst out laughing, saying, with an intonation which contained every form of anguish, stifled by every form of cynicism:—
“Bah!”
And she began to hum these words to a gay air:—
I am hungry, father.
I have no food.
I am cold, mother
I have no clothes.
Lolotte! Shiver,
Sob,
Jacquot!”
She had hardly finished this couplet, when she exclaimed:—
“Do you ever go to the play, Monsieur Marius?
I do.
I have a little brother who is a friend of the artists, and who gives me tickets sometimes.
But I don’t like the benches in the galleries. One is cramped and uncomfortable there.
There are rough people there sometimes; and people who smell bad.”
Then she scrutinized Marius, assumed a singular air and said:—
“Do you know, Mr. Marius, that you are a very handsome fellow?”
And at the same moment the same idea occurred to them both, and made her smile and him blush.
She stepped up to him, and laid her hand on his shoulder:
“You pay no heed to me, but I know you, Mr. Marius.
I meet you here on the staircase, and then I often see you going to a person named Father Mabeuf who lives in the direction of Austerlitz, sometimes when I have been strolling in that quarter.
It is very becoming to you to have your hair tumbled thus.”
She tried to render her voice soft, but only succeeded in making it very deep.
A portion of her words was lost in the transit from her larynx to her lips, as though on a piano where some notes are missing.
Marius had retreated gently.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, with his cool gravity,
“I have here a package which belongs to you, I think.
Permit me to return it to you.”
And he held out the envelope containing the four letters.
She clapped her hands and exclaimed:—
“We have been looking everywhere for that!”
Then she eagerly seized the package and opened the envelope, saying as she did so:—
“Dieu de Dieu! how my sister and I have hunted!
And it was you who found it!
On the boulevard, was it not?
It must have been on the boulevard?
You see, we let it fall when we were running.
It was that brat of a sister of mine who was so stupid.
When we got home, we could not find it anywhere.
As we did not wish to be beaten, as that is useless, as that is entirely useless, as that is absolutely useless, we said that we had carried the letters to the proper persons, and that they had said to us: ‘Nix.’
So here they are, those poor letters!
And how did you find out that they belonged to me?
Ah! yes, the writing.
So it was you that we jostled as we passed last night.
We couldn’t see.
I said to my sister:
‘Is it a gentleman?’
My sister said to me:
‘I think it is a gentleman.’”