“You irritate my curiosity. Come along, but if the one that pleases me is not complaisant she shall have nothing.”
“They will not even allow one to take them by the hand.”
“They are Charpillons, I suppose.”
“It looks like it. But you won’t see any men there.”
We were shewn into a large room where I noticed three pretty girls and an evil-looking man. I began with the usual compliments, to which the girls replied politely, but with an air of great sadness.
Goudar spoke to the man, and then came to me shrugging his shoulders, and saying,—
“We have come at a sad time. That man is a bailiff who has come to take the mother to prison if she can’t pay her landlord the twenty guineas’ rent she owes him, and they haven’t got a farthing. When the mother has been sent to prison the landlord will no doubt turn the girls out of doors.”
“They can live with their mother for nothing.”
“Not at all. If they have got the money they can have their meals in prison, but no one is allowed to live in a prison except the prisoners.”
I asked one of them where her sisters were.