On reaching the third story, the revolutionist, for such he evidently was, opened a door, and entered a dismal, bad-smelling room of poverty-stricken aspect. A woman of about forty was there, busily occupied over a small iron furnace casting lead bullets, of which a number ready for use were lying on the dirty brick floor beside her.
"Here they are, all hot, all hot," cried she with a fierce laugh as he came in. "I don't keep you waiting for your tools, you see; there's not a citizen of Paris that has a better help-mate than you, Auguste; is there, now? And I'm as ready with my knife as—but what have you there?" And the dreadful woman strode forward a step as she caught sight of the child, half-hidden behind her husband.
"It's a poor little devil I picked up on a barricade," replied Auguste. "Ma foi! I believe that he had followed his father to the fight, where the citizen received his passport for the other world; the little one had hooked himself on to the corpse, and I had some trouble to loosen his hold, and afterward to put him on his legs again; but a drop of brandy did it at last, and here he is!"
"And what on earth are we to do with him?" vociferated the woman, who had listened to this explanation with many a shrug and menacing gesture. "I shall not feed him, I tell you. Where's the grub to come from, I should like to know?"
"Come, now," said Auguste soothingly, "be reasonable, do. Now that the dog's dead, you can give him the bones and lickings, can't you? It won't cost more to keep this little wretch than it did to keep the dog. Not so much, I believe."
"He's not worth either bones or lickings," screamed the wife. "Medor earned his living, while this beast of a child"—here she caught the frightened boy by the arm and whirled him violently round—"hasn't the strength of a fly!"
"He'll be able to pick up rags in a day or two, Pelagie, you will see; Come, now, let us keep him. Here, sit down, young one." And Auguste pushed the child down on a wooden stool.
Pelagie stormed, but Auguste at last gained the day, and even obtained a crust of bread for the wretched little creature, whose large eyes glanced from the one to the other of the speakers while they debated his fate. His thin, pale cheek still bore the traces of the tears he had shed when his father fell, shot through the heart, on the barricade, and his little blouse and torn trousers were stained with his father's blood!
We shall not repeat the conversation of the husband and wife on the events of the day—that day when the infatuated workpeople and proletaires of Paris murdered the venerable priest who, obedient to the call of his sacred duties, had come to the scene of strife and slaughter to preach mercy and forbearance. "The shepherd gives his life for his sheep," and, "May my blood be the last shed," were the last words of Archbishop Affre. Alas! when the torch of civil war is once lighted, men seem to grow mad; the fiercest passions of humanity are let loose, and ruin and death seem alone able to end the struggle. So has it ever been with the excitable people of Paris; so will it ever be with the ignorant and vicious. Many fell after the good archbishop, and among them Auguste Vautrin. He had gone off, carrying with him the newly-made bullets, and leaving the child whose life he had probably saved; he returned no more. A neighbor whispered to Pelagie that same night that her husband was lying dead in the Rue St. Antoine, but the depraved and unloving wife did not care to reclaim his body, and all that was left of the miserable man was consequently thrown ignominiously into the common grave of the misguided revolutionists.