"And why beaten?" asked Mélanie.
"To make her work. You saw the other day that man who was making the dogs dance, and you remember how sorry you were when he beat one of them, because he would not make a bow in the minuet. Well, it must be pretty nearly the same thing in the present case."
"It is quite bad enough to beat a dog," said Mélanie. "I hope people don't beat their children in the same way."
"Perhaps the little girl," continued Madame d'Inville, "does not belong to this mountebank. Sometimes poor people, not being able to maintain their children, confide them to the first person who will take charge of them, and who hopes to gain something by making them work. These poor children, removed from their parents, learn nothing good, and are often unhappy. I knew one...."
"You knew one, dear grandmamma!" cried both the children at once.
"It was a little girl," said Madame d'Inville, "who was taken away from her native province by a fortune-teller; she was in danger of perishing of hunger, and of being crippled, and what is much worse, she ran the risk of becoming a thief."
"Oh! dear! how much I should like to know her history!" said Mélanie. As they had reached the Champs-Elysées, Madame d'Inville sat down, the two children seated themselves on the stool which she put under her feet, and, holding each other round the neck, to avoid falling, they listened to the history of Françou.
Françou, whose real name was Françoise, had lost her parents before she was five years old. They were so poor, that they had left nothing whatever for the maintenance of their child, and Françoise was placed with her uncle, her father's brother, who being himself very poor and having lost his wife, found it quite difficult enough to provide for the two little boys which she had left him, without the additional charge of a little girl. While he was grieving over this matter, there came into the village in which he lived a man named Jacques, whom he knew from having worked with him at the harvest, during the previous year.
Jacques was a native of Auvergne, and a long way from his own province, for what was formerly called Auvergne, is, as you remember, Eugène, that part of the country where the departments of the Puy-de-Dôme, du Cantal, &c., are now situated, and he was then in Maine, which is at present the department of the Sarthe. The natives of Auvergne are much in the habit of travelling beyond the limits of their own province. They leave it, while very young, to make what they call their Tour of France. As long as they are little, they sweep chimneys, like the Savoyards, and more than half of those children we meet with in the streets and call Savoyards, are really natives of Auvergne: they also go of errands in the town, and work in the country when they can get any to do. Many are travelling blacksmiths, and you may often meet them, carrying on their shoulders old shovels, old tongs, or old pots, which they buy, mend, and sell again. When they have gained a little money, they return to their own country, and marry. They are generally very honest and industrious people, but Jacques did not resemble them.
He thought himself possessed of more wit than others, because, instead of working, he invented a thousand deceptions to get a living. Sometimes he told fortunes, that is to say, he foretold what would happen to people, on the next day, or the following days, as if he really knew, and he found many foolish enough to believe him and to pay for his predictions. At other times, he would make up little bundles of herbs, which he gathered in the fields, and sell them to the country people, as certain remedies for the tooth-ache, or the bite of a mad dog. He would then go and spend in drink, the money obtained by this knavery. At other times, he would beg; but he never worked, while it was possible for him to do anything else.