To Lisa this seemed like an immediate realisation of the rising; she saw all the men with their red badges marching past the pork shop, firing bullets into her mirrors and marble, and carrying off sausages and chitterlings from the window.  The infamous projects of her brother-in-law were surely directed against herself—­against her own happiness.  She closed the drawer and looked round the room, reflecting that it was she herself who had provided this man with a home—­that he slept between her sheets and used her furniture.  And she was especially exasperated at his keeping his abominable infernal machine in that little deal table which she herself had used at Uncle Gradelle’s before her marriage—­a perfectly innocent, rickety little table.

For a while she stood thinking what she should do.  In the first place, it was useless to say anything to Quenu.  For a moment it occurred to her to provoke an explanation with Florent, but she dismissed that idea, fearing lest he would only go and perpetrate his crime elsewhere, and maliciously make a point of compromising them.  Then gradually growing somewhat calmer, she came to the conclusion that her best plan would be to keep a careful watch over her brother-in-law.  It would be time enough to take further steps at the first sign of danger.  She already had quite sufficient evidence to send him back to the galleys.

On returning to the shop again, she found Augustine in a state of great excitement.  Little Pauline had disappeared more than half an hour before, and to Lisa’s anxious questions the young woman could only reply:  “I don’t know where she can have got to, madame.  She was on the pavement there with a little boy.  I was watching them, and then I had to cut some ham for a gentleman, and I never saw them again.”

“I’ll wager it was Muche!” cried Lisa.  “Ah, the young scoundrel!”

It was, indeed, Muche who had enticed Pauline away.  The little girl, who was wearing a new blue-striped frock that day for the first time, had been anxious to exhibit it, and had accordingly taken her stand outside the shop, manifesting great propriety of bearing, and compressing her lips with the grave expression of a little woman of six who is afraid of soiling her clothes.  Her short and stiffly-starched petticoats stood out like the skirts of a ballet girl, allowing a full view of her tightly stretched white stockings and little sky-blue boots.  Her pinafore, which hung low about her neck, was finished off at the shoulders with an edging of embroidery, below which appeared her pretty little arms, bare and rosy.  She had small turquoise rings in her ears, a cross at her neck, a blue velvet ribbon in her well-brushed hair; and she displayed all her mother’s plumpness and softness—­the gracefulness, indeed, of a new doll.