"I do not know, citizen," she replied.

"How do you mean, you do not know? Then I pray you, citizeness, what is
all this pother about?"

"About the child, citizen," reiterated Jeannette obstinately.

"What child?"

"The child whom citizen Marat adopted last year and kept at that awful
house on the Chemin de Pantin."

"I did not know citizen Marat had adopted a child," remarked Chauvelin
thoughtfully.

"No one knew," she rejoined. "Not even citizeness Evrard. I was the only
one who knew. I had to go and see the child once every month. It was a
wretched, miserable brat," the woman went on, her shrivelled old breast
vaguely stirred, mayhap, by some atrophied feeling of motherhood. "More
than half-starved ... and the look in its eyes, citizen! It was enough
to make you cry! I could see by his poor little emaciated body and his
nice little hands and feet that he ought never to have been put in that
awful house, where--"

She paused, and that quick look of furtive terror, which was so often to
be met with in the eyes of the timid these days, crept into her wrinkled
face.

"Well, citizeness," Chauvelin rejoined quietly, "why don't you proceed?