Christine placed a table in the middle of the room, and covered it with food, bottles, and glasses; the robbers seated themselves about the table, and fell to with a sort of brutal satisfaction. Sister Anne remained in front of the fire. Leroux placed bread, wine, and roast meat before her; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and forced herself to eat a little, in order to keep up her strength and to dissemble her terror.
"You see that woman?" said Leroux to his companions; "well, I'll bet she's as meek as a lamb; I'll do whatever I choose with her."
"Don't trust to looks," said Christine, as she joined the robbers at the table; "a woman can take a man in with those airs and graces; but faces are deceitful."
"Yours isn't, for you're the picture of Lucifer's sister!"
This jest made them all laugh, they filled and emptied their glasses with startling rapidity; the more they drank, the more they talked. The hideous Christine kept pace with them, and only Leroux, whose thoughts were fixed on Sister Anne, retained some show of reason.
"Where could this woman have come from?" queried one of the thieves; "she don't look as if she worked in the fields."
"Bah! it's some girl that's gone wrong; her lover's left her, and she's travelling about looking for him. That's the way with all the girls that listen to lovers!"
Sister Anne wiped away the tears that trembled on her eyelids, for her heart told her that the man was right.
"Morgué!" said Christine; "if I had a daughter, and she was unlucky enough to go wrong, I'd strangle her with my own hands."
"Hear that!" said Jacques; "it's a blasted shame that you haven't got some children; they'd be a handsome lot!"