The hag’s black eyes snapped as she saw Louise whom the hunchback had saved from the water.
“Pretty––blind––she’ll beg us lots of money!” she said gleefully to Jacques. But to the girl she pretended aid, and her leathern, liquor-coated voice proclaimed:
“No friends, eh, Dearie? Then I’ll take care of you!”
Only poor Pierre sympathized with Louise’s awful grief in being thrown adrift on Paris through the violent disappearance of her beloved sister. He trembled to think what knavery his wicked kinsfolk meant, though he himself was their helpless slave; the target of kicks, cuffs, and the robbery of all his earnings.
La Frochard led the way to their dank and noisome den, opening from a street trap-door and giving at the other extremity on a sort of water-rat exit underneath the pier. She handed Louise down the steps and taking her things remarked in a self-satisfied tone: “Here are your lodgings, Dearie!”
The old woman arrayed herself in 35 Louise’s shawl, and grinned as she tried on the girl’s widespread garden hat. She flung the girl about roughly, even choking her. To heighten the rosy picture of great wealth to accrue, she took a deep draught of cognac from her loved black bottle. Poor Louise sank down to deep slumber, from which neither the noisy potations of La Frochard and Jacques, nor their cursing and abuse of the hunchback Pierre, sufficed to awaken her.
Next morning the hag pulled the blind girl out of the rough bed and dressed her in beggar’s garments.
“You must go out now on the street with us and sing!” she said.
“... But you promised to help me find Henriette....” said the poor girl, piteously.
“We’ll find her for you one of these days, but in the meantime you must earn your keep. No––I don’t mean, actually beg! You do the singing, and I’ll do the begging.”