'Please take pity upon us, Mademoiselle Pauline. We are so miserable and wretched now that father is dead!'
Houtelard had gone off to sea one stormy evening and had never returned. His body had never been found, nor had that of his mate, nor even a single plank of their boat. Pauline, however, obliged as she was to exercise strict supervision over her charities, had sworn that she would never give a single sou to either son or widow, for they lived together in open shame.
'You know quite well why I won't have you coming here,' Pauline replied. 'When you behave differently, I will see what I can do for you.'
Thereupon the young fellow began to plead his cause in a whining voice: 'It is all her fault; she brought it about. She would have gone on beating me otherwise. Please give us a trifle, kind young lady. We have lost everything. I could get on well enough myself, but it is for her that I'm asking you, and she is very ill—indeed she is; I swear it.'
Pauline ended by taking pity on him and sending him away with a loaf of bread and some stew; and she even promised to call on the sick woman and take her some medicine.
'Medicine, indeed!' muttered Chanteau. 'Just you try to get her to swallow it!'
But Pauline had already turned her attention to the Prouane girl, one of whose cheeks was gashed.
'How have you managed to do that?'
'I fell against a tree, Mademoiselle Pauline.'
'Against a tree? It looks more like a cut from the corner of a table.'