CHAPTER XXIV.
FRANCOIS AND AMANDINE.
Francois and Amandine slept in a room situated immediately over the kitchen, at the extremity of a corridor, into which opened several other rooms, serving as private dining-rooms to the frequenters of the tavern. After having partaken of their frugal supper, instead of extinguishing their lantern, according to the orders of the widow, the two children had watched, leaving their door open, to see Martial when he should come to his room. Placed on a rickety stool, the lantern shed a sickly light through the miserable room. Walls of plaster, a cot for Francois, a child's bedstead, very old, and much too short for Amandine, a heap of broken chairs and benches, the result of some of the drunken brawls and turbulent conduct which had taken place at the tavern; such was the interior of this den.
Amandine, seated on the edge of the cot, tried to dress her head with the stolen gift of her brother Nicholas, Francois, kneeling, presented a fragment of looking-glass to his sister, who, with her head half-turned round, was occupied in tying the ends of the silk into a large rosette. Very attentive, and very much struck with this coiffure, Francois neglected for a moment to hold the glass in such a position that his sister could see. "Raise the glass higher now—I cannot see; there—so—good. Wait a little; now I have finished. Look! how do you think it looks?"
"Oh, very well—very well! What a fine tie! You'll make one just like it with my cravat, won't you?"
"Yes, directly; but let me walk a little. You go before—backward; hold the glass up so that I can see myself as I walk." Francois executed this difficult maneuver very well, to the great satisfaction of Amandine, who strutted up and down triumphantly, under the rosette and ears of her foulard. Very innocent under any other circumstances, this conduct become culpable, as Francois and Amandine both knew the prize was stolen; another proof of the frightful facility with which children, even well endowed, are corrupted almost without knowing it, when they are continually plunged in a criminal atmosphere.
And, besides, the sole mentor of these little unfortunates, their brother Martial, was not himself irreproachable, as we have said: incapable of committing a theft or murder, he did not the less lead an irregular and wandering life. They refused to commit certain bad actions, not from honesty, but to obey Martial, whom they tenderly loved, and to disobey their mother, whom they feared and hated. It is hard to say how much the perceptions of morality with these children were doubtful, vacillating, precarious; with Francois particularly, arrived at that dangerous period where the mind, hesitating, undecided between good and evil, perhaps in one moment may be lost or saved.
"How this red becomes you, sister!" said Francois. "How pretty it is! When we go and play on the shore in front of the plaster-kilns, you must dress yourself so, to make the children wild, who are always throwing stones at us and calling us little guillotines. I'll put on my fine red cravat, and we will tell them, 'Never mind, you haven't such handsome handkerchiefs as these.'"
"But I say, Francois," said Amandine, after a pause, "if they knew that they were stolen, they would call us little thieves."
"Who cares if they do?"