The widow raised her hand, and pointed with her finger towards the ceiling. Her daughter perfectly comprehended the signal, and departed at once to fetch François.
The countenance of the widow Martial had become less cloudy since the arrival of Nicholas, whom she greatly preferred to Calabash, but by no means entertaining for him the affection she felt for her Toulon son, as she designated him; for the maternal love of this ferocious woman appeared to increase in proportion to the criminality of her offspring. This perverse preference will serve to account for the widow's indifference towards her two younger children, neither of whom exhibited any disposition to evil, as well as her perfect hatred of Martial, her eldest son, who, although not leading an altogether irreproachable life, might still have passed for a perfectly honest and well-conducted person if placed in comparison with Nicholas, Calabash, or his brother, the felon at Toulon.
"Which road did you take to-night?" inquired the widow of her son.
"Why, as I returned from the Quai de Billy, where, you know, I had to go to meet the gentleman who appointed to see me there, I spied a barge moored alongside the quay; it was as dark as pitch. 'Halloa!' says I, 'no light in the cabin? No doubt,' says I, 'all hands are ashore. I'll just go on board, and have a look; if I meet any one, it's easy to ask for a bit of string, and make up a fudge about wanting to splice my oar.' So up the side I climbs, and ventures into the cabin. Not a soul was there; so I began collecting all I could find: clothes, a great box, and, on the deck, four quintals of copper. So, you may guess, I was obliged to make two journeys. The vessel was loaded with copper and iron; but here comes François and Calabash. Now, then, let's be off to the boat. Here, you young un, you Amandine! Look sharp, and make yourself useful; you can carry the clothes; we must get new things, you know, before we can throw aside our old ones."
Left alone, the widow busied herself in preparations for the family supper. She placed on the table bottles, glasses, earthenware, plates, with forks and spoons of silver; and, by the time this occupation was completed, her offspring returned heavily laden.
Little François staggered beneath the weight of copper which he carried on his shoulders, and Amandine was almost buried beneath the mass of stolen garments which she bore on her head, while Nicholas and Calabash brought in between them a wooden case, on the top of which lay the fourth lump of copper.
"The case,—the case!" cried Calabash, with savage eagerness. "Come, let's rip it open, and know what's in it."
The lumps of copper were flung on the ground. Nicholas took the heavy hatchet he carried in his belt, and introduced its strong iron head between the lid and the box which he had set down in the middle of the kitchen, and endeavoured with all his strength to force it open. The red and flickering light of the fire illumined this scene of pillage, while, from without, the loud gusts of the night wind increased in violence.
Nicholas, meanwhile, attired in his goatskin vest, stooped over the box, and essayed with all his might to wrench off the top, breaking out into the most horrible and blasphemous expressions, as he found the solidity of the fastenings resist all his endeavours to arrive at a knowledge of its contents; and Calabash, her eyes inflamed by covetousness, her cheeks flushed by the excitement of plunder, knelt down beside the case, on which she leaned her utmost weight, in order to give more power to the action of the lever employed by Nicholas. The widow, separated from the group by the table, on the other side of which she was standing, in her eagerness to behold the spoils, threw herself almost across the table, the better to gaze on the booty; her longing eyes sparkled with eagerness to learn the value of it. And finally—though unhappily, too true to human nature—the two children, whose naturally good inclinations had so often triumphed over the sea of vice and domestic corruption by which they were surrounded, even they, forgetting at once both their fears and their scruples, were alike infected by the same fatal curiosity.
Huddling close to each other, their eyes glittering with excitement, the breathing short and quick, François and Amandine seemed of all the party most impatient to ascertain the contents of the case, and the most irritated and out of patience with the slow progress made by Nicholas in his attempts to break it open. At length the lid yielded to the powerful and repeated blows dealt on it by the vigorous arm of the young man, and as its fragments fell on the ground a loud, exulting cry rose from the joyful and almost breathless group, who, joining in one wild mass, from the mother to the little girl, rushed forward, and with savage haste threw themselves on the opened box, which, forwarded, doubtless, by some house in Paris to a fashionable draper and mercer residing near the banks of the river, contained a large assortment of the different materials employed in female attire.