She was smiling, and at that moment, her eyes had not their monkey-like and ferocious expression, but they were pleading and tender, with all of their sweetest childlike candor.
"You know," my host said to me in a low voice, "that the poor woman has fallen into senile imbecility, and that is the cause of her looks, which are so strange, considering the terrible sight she has seen.
"Do you think so?" the magistrate said. "You must remember that she is not yet sixty, and I do not think that it is a case of senile imbecility, but that she is quite conscious of the crime that has been committed."
"Then why should she smile?"
"Because she is pleased at what she has done."
"Oh! no; you are really too subtle!"
The magistrate suddenly turned to Babette, and, looking at her steadily, he said:
"I suppose you know what has happened, and why this crime was committed?"
She left off smiling, and her pretty, childlike eyes became her abominable monkey's eyes again, and then the answer was, suddenly to pull up her petticoats and to show us the lower part of her person. Yes, the magistrate had been quite right. That old woman had been a Cleopatra, a Diana, a Ninon de L'Enclos, and the rest of her body had remained like a child's, even more than her eyes. We were thunderstruck at the sight.
"Pigs! Pigs!" la Friezê shouted to us. "You also wanted to have something to do with her!"