QUITE ALONE.
BOOK THE SECOND: WOMANHOOD.
CHAPTER XLI. THE WILD WOMAN.

WHAT was she to do? Try another pawn-shop?
She had no passport. They must have papers.
It was the law, it seemed. But how did
people get papers? Were they born with
papers? Should she go back to the goldsmiths
on the Quai and try them once more? Alas!
of what avail would that be? She would receive
only the same answers, the same rebuffs. Was
there no one in this enormous city of Paris who
would purchase a gewgaw from a poor child
who wanted to run away? She had heard of a
place called the Temple. She had read of it,
too, and Madame de Kergolay had talked to her
about it hundreds of times as the site of that
old donjon keep where the Martyr King and
his queen had lain in captivity, and where the
poor little Dauphin had been handed over to the
cobbler Simon, to be slowly tortured to death.
The donjon keep was pulled down now, and
the Temple was a place where they bought and
sold everything. Should she ask her way there?
But she knew that she would have to pass close
to the Marais; and an indefinable terror forbade
her to retrace her footsteps.

She came, suddenly, in the middle of the
pavement, on a marchand d'habits—an old-
clothesman. No Jew was he. In Paris,
Christians do not disdain to carry the bag, and wear
the three hats. This fellow was a Marseillais,
swarthy and bright-eyed, with a head of tufted
black hair, dazzling white teeth, and earrings.
He had two umbrellas beneath one arm, and a
cavalry sabre beneath the other, a cocked-hat
in one hand besides the three on his head, a pair
of patent leather boots tucked in his waistband,
and any number of loose garments flying all
abroad about him: besides his bulging bag.

"Troun de l'air!" cried the marchand d'habits
when he saw Lily, "what a pretty girl."

"Will you buy a locket?" said the girl,
shrinking from the man's bold gaze, and holding
out the trinket in her little trembling hand. She
was desperate, now. She would have had
courage to ask the statue of Henry the Fourth
on the Pont Neuf if he would buy a locket.

"Carragoui de zeval," exclaimed the Marseillais
in return, "I am not a jeweller. What do
you want for your little breloque, mon anze
zérie?"

"A hundred francs," replied Lily, half
choking.

"Masoulipatam!" shouted the marchand
d'habits, who seemed to possess an inexhaustible
arsenal of strange execrations. "Veux-tou mi
rouiner? Ma, I will be generous. Ze souis
Chrétien, moi, et pas oune Zouif. Twelve francs
fifty centimes for your locket."

"No," cried Lily, passionately. She could
have strangled the man.

"Quesaco! crrricuicoui!" continued the
Marseillais. "Don't fly into a temper. I don't
buy jewellery on fête-days. Come and breakfast
with me. Allons manzer, allons boire!"
And the eyes of the old-clothesman sparkled
like unto live coals.

Lily drew her shawl about her, and, spurning
his offer, walked indignantly away.

"Pif de Pilate!" the Marseillais muttered,
looking after her, "z'est oune zentille petite
fillette za. Never mind. I shall dance
at the Barrière du Trône to-night. Marchand
d'hab-i-i-i-i-ts." And with his lugubrious
and long-drawn-out chant, his bag and his
bright eyes, the old-clothesman went on his way.
They were magnificent eyes, only he had spoilt
them by a habit of squinting, contracted through
the endeavour to glance at the first floor
windows on both sides of the street at once, to
see whether the occupants had any old clothes
to sell.

Twelve francs fifty for her locket! The
villains. The wicked, wicked, hard-hearted
people, she thought. Had she had time, she
could have sat down on a door-step, covered her
face with her shawl, and cried her eyes out.
But it was with her as with the Wandering
Jew, "Onward! Onward!"

She remembered that she was not yet quite
destitute. Her breakfast paid for, she was still
the possessor of between eighteen and nineteen
francs. That would carry her some distance
towards her destination—support her for some
days, she thought. And then she would beg.
She beg! Perhaps there were cottages on the
road where the people were kind and would
give her bread and milk, and allow her to sleep
on the straw in their barns. She would have
nothing more to do with this cruel and pitiless
Paris. She would begin her journey at once.
How it was to be prosecuted she had not the