"I am sorry that Mamma Theodore isn't here," said Pierre, "I wanted to
speak to her."

"But perhaps you would like to wait for her, Monsieur l'Abbe. She has
gone to my Uncle Toussaint's in the Rue Marcadet; and she can't stop much
longer, for she's been away more than an hour."

Thereupon Celine cleared one of the chairs on which lay a handful of
scraps of wood, picked up on some waste ground.

The bare and fireless room was assuredly also a breadless one. Pierre
could divine the absence of the bread-winner, the disappearance of the
man who represents will and strength in the home, and on whom one still
relies even when weeks have gone by without work. He goes out and scours
the city, and often ends by bringing back the indispensable crust which
keeps death at bay. But with his disappearance comes complete
abandonment, the wife and child in danger, destitute of all prop and
help.

Pierre, who had sat down and was looking at that poor, little, blue-eyed
girl, to whose lips a smile returned in spite of everything, could not
keep from questioning her on another point. "So you don't go to school,
my child?" said he.

She faintly blushed and answered: "I've no shoes to go in."

He glanced at her feet, and saw that she was wearing a pair of ragged old
list-slippers, from which her little toes protruded, red with cold.

"Besides," she continued, "Mamma Theodore says that one doesn't go to