there is a pretty girl of fifteen like ours, it is very stupid not to make
use of her beauty.'"

"Oh! good! I understand. After having sold the clothes, he wished to sell
the body."

"When he said that, Fortune, my blood boiled; and, to be just, I made him
blush with shame at my reproaches: and as this bad woman wished to meddle
in our quarrel by asserting that my husband could do with his daughter as
he pleased, I treated her so badly, the wretch, that my husband beat me,
and since that time I have not seen them."

"Look here, Jeanne, there are folks condemned to ten years' imprisonment,
who would not have done like your husband; at least, they only despoil
strangers."

"At bottom he is not wicked, look you; it is bad company at the taverns
which has ruined him."

"Yes, he would not harm a child; but to a grown person it is different."

"What would you have? One must take life as it comes. At least, my husband
gone, I had no longer any fear of being lamed by any blow. I took fresh
courage. Not having anything to purchase a mattress with, for before all
one must eat and pay rent, and my poor daughter Catherine and myself could
hardly earn together forty sous a day, my two other children being too
young to work--for want of a mattress we slept upon a straw bed, made with
straw that we picked up at the door of a packer in our street."

"And I have squandered my earnings!"