“What?  When he comes back!” she cried in despair.  “So you think that he will come back.  O God!  O God!  I shall never be happy again.”

He did, indeed, come back.  But when she gave him the wheelwright’s address he sneered and shrugged his shoulders.  He knew all about the Paris wheelwrights!  A set of sweaters, a parcel of lazy rogues, who made poor people toil and moil for them.  Besides, he had never finished his apprenticeship; he was only fit for running errands, in which capacity he was willing to accept a post in a large shop.  When Mathieu had procured him such a situation, he did not remain in it a fortnight.  One fine evening he disappeared with the parcels of goods which he had been told to deliver.  In turn he tried to learn a baker’s calling, became a mason’s hodman, secured work at the markets, but without ever fixing himself anywhere.  He simply discouraged his protector, and left all sorts of roguery behind him for others to liquidate.  It became necessary to renounce the hope of saving him.  When he turned up, as he did periodically, emaciated, hungry, and in rags, they had to limit themselves to providing him with the means to buy a jacket and some bread.

Thus Norine lived on in a state of mortal disquietude.  For long weeks Alexandre seemed to be dead, but she, nevertheless, started at the slightest sound that she heard on the landing.  She always felt him to be there, and whenever he suddenly rapped on the door she recognized his heavy knock and began to tremble as if he had come to beat her.  He had noticed how his presence reduced the unhappy woman to a state of abject terror, and he profited by this to extract from her whatever little sums she hid away.  When she had handed him the five-franc piece which Mathieu, as a rule, left with her for this purpose, the young rascal was not content, but began searching for more.  At times he made his appearance in a wild, haggard state, declaring that he should certainly be sent to prison that evening if he did not secure ten francs, and talking the while of smashing everything in the room or else of carrying off the little clock in order to sell it.  And it was then necessary for Cecile to intervene and turn him out of the place; for, however puny she might be, she had a brave heart.  But if he went off it was only to return a few days later with fresh demands, threatening that he would shout his story to everybody on the stairs if the ten francs were not given to him.  One day, when his mother had no money in the place and began to weep, he talked of ripping up the mattress, where, said he, she probably kept her hoard.  Briefly, the sisters’ little home was becoming a perfect hell.