"Well, thou art helpless. I should not be. Forget. Thy chance may come." He was at the end of his wisdom. He pitied this weak-hearted coward who so frankly avowed his defect. "We will speak of it no more, Pierre, or not now. But what brought you to Paris? Let us have it all, and get done with it."
"My poor little humpback was hardly six years old when she came to me, crying, to know why the village children would not play with her. She was a humpback and a bastard. What was 'bastard'? I have always fled from trouble. One day I took the child and what little I had, and was away to Paris. God knows how it hurt me to hear every evening how she had been mocked and tormented; one is so foolishly tender. In this great city I sought work, and starved. And when at last she was fading before my eyes, I stole—my God, I stole!"
"Dame! thou art particular. Must a man starve?"
"When I got money out of a full purse I took, I set up our little business, and then I found thee. And this is all. I dare say I shall feel better to have told some one. I did not want to steal. I did not steal after I began with the booth, unless I was in need—oh, sorely in need. It was so on that fortunate day when I was saved by thee. In thy place I should have kept the old fishwife's purse."
"And let me swing?"
"Yes—perhaps; I don't know. I—it is well for me thou wert not a coward."
"Sacristie! It appears that not to be a coward has its uses. Now bon jour and adieu to the whole of this business. Let the miserable past go. 'T is bad company, and not amusing. Have no fear; I will take care of thee. Come, let us go home."
"Thou wilt look about a little before we go?"
"Toto, he is mad, this man."
"I sometimes think I am. At night, in my dreams, I have him by the throat, and he laughs, and I cannot hold him. I wake up, and curse in the darkness because I cannot kill him. And then I know it is a debt never to be paid—never."