"At Paris. He wished to be a locksmith,—a capital business,—always with red-hot iron and fire around you; dangerous you may suppose, but then that suited him. But he, like me, was badly disposed, and could not agree with his master; and then, too, they were always throwing his father and one of his brothers in his teeth. But that's nothing to you. The end of it was, that he returned to his mother, who is a very devil in sin and wickedness, and began to poach on the river. He cannot see me at Paris, and in the daytime I go to see him in his island, the Ile du Ravageur, near Asnières. It's very near; though if it were farther off, I would go all the same, even if I went on my hands and knees, or swam all the way, for I can swim like an otter."
"You must be very happy to go into the country," said La Goualeuse, with a sigh; "especially if you are as fond as I am of walking in the fields."
"I prefer walking in the woods and large forests with my man."
"In the forests! Oh, ain't you afraid?"
"Afraid! Oh, yes, afraid! I should think so! What can a she-wolf fear? The thicker and more lonely the forest, the better I should like it. A lone hut in which I should live with Martial as a poacher, to go with him at night to set the snares for the game, and then, if the keepers came to apprehend us, to fire at them, both of us, whilst my man and I were hid in underwood,—ah, that would indeed be happiness!"
"Then you have lived in the woods, La Louve?"
"Never."
"Who gave you these ideas, then?"
"Martial."
"How did he acquire them?"