Julia, half-laughing, half-pouting, took the manuscript, and read aloud the following story:
MADAME CROQUE-MITAINE:
A TALE.
"Come away! come away, Paul," said little Louisa to her youngest brother, "we have more time than we want; the shop where they sell flowers and toys is at the end of the next street; mamma is dressing, and before she has finished we shall be back again, you with your whip, and I with my nosegay, and we will bring back one for mamma too, which will please her."
Taking Paul by the hand, she walked off with him as fast as their little legs could carry them. Louisa was nine years old, and Paul only seven, and they were two of the prettiest children imaginable. Louisa was dressed in a frock of snow-white cambric, and a rose-coloured sash encircled her little waist. As she walked along, she admired her red shoes, while her fair hair fell in ringlets over her shoulders. Paul's hair was neither less fair nor less beautiful; he wore a nankeen dress, quite new, an embroidered waistcoat, and an open worked shirt; but all these were nothing in comparison with the pleasure which awaited them. Their mother had promised to take them to the fair of Saint Cloud, and they were to set out in an hour. In the country, where, up to the present time, they had resided, they had been permitted to run about in the park, and sometimes even into the village; since they had come to Paris, however, they had been forbidden ever to venture beyond the carriage-gate, but the habit of attending to these injunctions was not yet confirmed, and besides, Louisa wanted to have a bouquet to take with her to Saint Cloud, and Paul wanted a whip, that he might whip his papa's horses, for he had promised to take him by his side in front of the calèche, and they hastened to buy these things unknown to their mother, with the money that she had just given them for their week's allowance.
All the passers-by stopped to look at them: "What pretty children!" they said, "how can they be allowed to go in the streets alone at their age?" And Louisa pulled Paul by the hand, in order to walk faster, so as not to hear them. A cabriolet which was coming very quickly behind them, made them redouble their haste. "Let us run fast," said Louisa, "here comes a cabriolet," but the cabriolet also ran, and Louisa, in her fright, turned to the right instead of to the left, and passed the flower-shop without perceiving it. The cabriolet still followed them, every instant drawing nearer; the noise of the wheels so bewildered Louisa, that thinking it was upon her heels, she rushed into another street. The vehicle took the same direction, and in turning round, the horse trotting in the middle of the gutter, sent up such a shower of mud and water, that our two terrified children were completely covered by it.
Paul instantly burst into tears: "My embroidered waistcoat is spoiled," he exclaimed.
"Be quiet," said Louisa, "we shall be observed," and she cast an anxious and melancholy look, sometimes around her, and sometimes on her cambric dress, which was even more splashed than Paul's waistcoat.
"Shall we soon reach the toy-shop?" asked Paul, still crying, though in a lower tone.
"We have only to go back," said Louisa, "for I think we have come too far; if we take the same way back, we shall soon be there," and she pulled Paul still more forcibly, while she kept close up to the wall, in the hope of not being seen; nevertheless, she did not know how she could venture to enter the toy-shop, or return home to her mother, with her dress in this condition.
All the streets seemed alike, and a child knows only the one in which it lives. Louisa did not return through the same streets by which the cabriolet had followed her. The farther she went, the more uneasy did she become, at not reaching the shop, and she dragged Paul's arm, who, not being able to walk so fast, said to her, "Don't go so fast, you hurt me." They went down a little street, which somewhat resembled one in the neighbourhood of their own house through which Louisa had sometimes passed, but at the end of it they found no passage, and instead of their road, they beheld ... Madame Croque-Mitaine, rummaging with her crook in a heap of rags.