forehead and her red lips curling with that same ferocious smile which Eugene Delacroix and David (of Angers) caught and represented so admirably.  True image of the People, this fiery and swarthy creature seemed to emit revolt through her piercing yellow eyes, blazing with the insolence of a soldier.  She inherited from her father so violent a nature that the whole family, except Tonsard, and all who frequented the tavern feared her.

“Well, how are you now?” she said to La Pechina as the latter recovered consciousness.

Catherine had placed her victim on a little mound beside the brook and was bringing her to her senses with dashes of cold water.  “Where am I?” said the child, opening her beautiful black eyes through which a sun-ray seemed to glide.

“Ah!” said Catherine, “if it hadn’t been for me you’d have been killed.”

“Thank you,” said the girl, still bewildered; “what happened to me?”

“You stumbled over a root and fell flat in the road over there, as if shot.  Ha! how you did run!”

“It was your brother who made me,” said La Pechina, remembering Nicolas.

“My brother?  I did not see him,” said Catherine.  “What did he do to you, poor fellow, that should make you fly as if he were a wolf?  Isn’t he handsomer than your Monsieur Michaud?”

“Oh!” said the girl, contemptuously.

“See here, little one; you are laying up a crop of evils for yourself by loving those who persecute us.  Why don’t you keep to our side?”

“Why don’t you come to church; and why do you steal things night and day?” asked the child.

“So you let those people talk you over!” sneered Catherine.  “They love us, don’t they?—­just as they love their food which they get out of us, and they want new dishes every day.  Did you ever know one of them to marry a peasant-girl?  Not they!  Does Sarcus the rich let his son marry that handsome Gatienne Giboulard?  Not he, though she is the daughter of a rich upholsterer.  You have never been at the Tivoli ball at Soulanges in Socquard’s tavern; you had better come.  You’ll see ’em all there, these bourgeois fellows, and you’ll find they are not worth the money we shall get out of them when we’ve pulled them down.  Come to the fair this year!”

“They say it’s fine, that Soulanges fair!” cried La Pechina, artlessly.

“I’ll tell you what it is in two words,” said Catherine.  “If you are handsome, you are well ogled.  What is the good of being as pretty as you are if you are not admired by the men?  Ha! when I heard one of them say for the first time, ‘What a fine sprig of a girl!’ all my blood was on fire.  It was at Socquard’s, in the middle of a dance; my grandfather, Fourchon, who was playing the clarionet, heard it and laughed.  Tivoli seemed to me as grand and fine as heaven itself.  It’s lighted up, my dear, with glass lamps, and you’ll think you are in paradise.  All the gentlemen of Soulanges and Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes will be there.  Ever since that first night I’ve loved the place where those words rang in my ears like military music.  It’s worthy giving your eternity to hear such words said of you by a man you love.”