When Marjolin was nearly four years of age, old Mother Chantemesse also happened to find a child, a little girl, lying on the footway of the Rue Saint Denis, near the corner of the market.  Judging by the little one’s size, she seemed to be a couple of years old, but she could already chatter like a magpie, murdering her words in an incessant childish babble.  Old Mother Chantemesse after a time gathered that her name was Cadine, and that on the previous evening her mother had left her sitting on a doorstep, with instructions to wait till she returned.  The child had fallen asleep there, and did not cry.  She related that she was beaten at home; and she gladly followed Mother Chantemesse, seemingly quite enchanted with that huge square, where there were so many people and such piles of vegetables.  Mother Chantemesse, a retail dealer by trade, was a crusty but very worthy woman, approaching her sixtieth year.  She was extremely fond of children, and had lost three boys of her own when they were mere babies.  She came to the opinion that the chit she had found “was far too wide awake to kick the bucket,” and so she adopted her.

One evening, however, as she was going off home with her right hand clasping Cadine’s, Marjolin came up and unceremoniously caught hold of her left hand.

“Nay, my lad,” said the old woman, stopping, “the place is filled.  Have you left your big Therese, then?  What a fickle little gadabout you are!”

The boy gazed at her with his smiling eyes, without letting go of her hand.  He looked so pretty with his curly hair that she could not resist him.  “Well, come along, then, you little scamp,” said she; “I’ll put you to bed as well.”

Thus she made her appearance in the Rue au Lard, where she lived, with a child clinging to either hand.  Marjolin made himself quite at home there.  When the two children proved too noisy the old woman cuffed them, delighted to shout and worry herself, and wash the youngsters, and pack them away beneath the blankets.  She had fixed them up a little bed in an old costermonger’s barrow, the wheels and shafts of which had disappeared.  It was like a big cradle, a trifle hard, but retaining a strong scent of the vegetables which it had long kept fresh and cool beneath a covering of damp cloths.  And there, when four years old, Cadine and Marjolin slept locked in each other’s arms.

They grew up together, and were always to be seen with their arms about one another’s waist.  At night time old Mother Chantemesse heard them prattling softly.  Cadine’s clear treble went chattering on for hours together, while Marjolin listened with occasional expressions of astonishment vented in a deeper tone.  The girl was a mischievous young creature, and concocted all sorts of stories to frighten her companion; telling him, for instance, that she had one night seen a man, dressed all in white, looking at them and putting out a great red tongue, at the foot of the bed.  Marjolin quite perspired with