Toward six o'clock the next morning, when la Mère Corniche and her broom alone were stirring, there appeared at a gabled window that broke through the crust of the roofs, the figure of a young girl, who, after a glance down at the quiet courtyard and the windows void of life, remained to give the final touches to a scattering of golden hair.
The air was still young, and in the skies the multifarious tints of the dawn had not quite faded as the burly sun bobbed up among the distant chimney-tops. She ensconced herself in the window, running her hands with indolent movements through the meshes as though reluctant to leave the flash and play of the sun amid its lusters. She was young and pretty, and she knew it, and, with a frank enjoyment, she let the long locks slip through her fingers or brought them caressingly against her cheek.
Though from her figure she could not have been more than eighteen, yet in the poise of her head and in the subtile smile, full of grace and piquancy, there showed the coquetry of the woman who plans to please the masculine eye.
Suddenly she sprang back, leaving the window vacant. A moment later there emerged opposite the thoughtful face of Barabant. Unaware of her proximity, he swept the courtyard with an indifferent look, and drawing from his pocket the three sous that alone remained to him, he fell into a deep meditation.
Presently the sprightly eyes and mischievous profile of the girl returned, cautiously, as though awaiting a challenge. Then, as in the abstraction of his mood he continued to be oblivious to her presence, she advanced to fuller view.
Gradually her curiosity became excited by an evident conflict in his moods. At one moment he pulled a long, somber face, and at the next he lapsed into laughter. As human nature cannot endure in silence the spectacle of someone laughing to himself, the girl, unable longer to restrain her interest, called to him with that melody which is natural to the voice of a maiden:
"Well, citoyen, are you going to laugh or cry?"
At her banter, Barabant started up so suddenly that one of the sous which he had been regarding meditatively slipped from his fingers, bounded on the roof, rolled along the gutter, and disappeared in the water-hole.
"Diable! there goes my dinner!"
"How so?" the girl said, repressing her laugh at his long face.