Gavroche shrugged his shoulders; turned on his heels: “We need have no fear, comrades; the Republic will slit his neck otherwise,” said he. “Come.”
The widow Snacheur rose from her chair, looked stealthily about her, lit a second candle-end, and went a-tiptoe to the door of the girl’s room. She listened, cautiously turned the handle of the door to see that the lock held, and returned to her table.
She changed her seat so that she could see, from where she sat, the door into the maid’s room.
She brought out a bag of loose silver from a pocket in her petticoat, poured the contents upon a piece of felt to prevent its making a noise, and counting it into tens she made the money up into rolls with some scraps of newspaper.
There was a strange look upon her withered wizened features in the doing—it might once have been a smile, it was now something between suspicion and greed and satisfaction. The gaunt fingers counted the rolls.
Thou poor fool! what avails thee now, or has ever availed, or shall ever avail to thy life’s enrichment, this avid culture of thy sordid isolated self? Hast thou found life in gathering gold, or in thy wilful cruelties to the weak, or in hate as a carpet to thy mean wayfaring, or in the lip’s protruded contempt upon thee in thy walks abroad? God! to spend thy nine and seventy years upon this journey and upon this travail!
Hearest thou no stealthy fumblings at the locks of thy outer door? Thy gold then hath not kept thee the alert hearing in thy ears, nor won thee the willing service of the hearing of others! And that poor half-famished slave-girl of thine, with her fifteen years crying out for bread, she, whom thou didst sting with thy bitter coward tongue but this morning—she sleeps in her chill room, heavy with the fatigue of thy overtaxings put upon a frail ill-nourished body; she lies mute with the numbing weariness of hunger—how shall she serve thee with the watch-dog ear of affection to guard thee from harm?
There is a stealthy hand at thy door, and the latchet turns slowly within the wards of thy locks.
A messenger stands without, and his summons none may question—thou must needs make thy further journeyings without thy dingy hoard, without purse or scrip, by thy lank lean shivering self—alone.
Ay, at last thy ears warn!