Part 75 (1/2)
”And can you read and write?”
”No, madame; but that does not matter, as monsieur can.”
”Did your parents ever take you to church? Have you been to your first Communion? Do you know your Catechism?”
”Madame, papa wanted to make me do something of the kind you speak of, but mamma would not have it--”
”Your mother?” exclaimed the Baroness. ”Is she bad to you, then?”
”She was always beating me. I don't know why, but I was always being quarreled over by my father and mother--”
”Did you ever hear of G.o.d?” cried the Baroness.
The girl looked up wide-eyed.
”Oh, yes, papa and mamma often said 'Good G.o.d,' and 'In G.o.d's name,' and 'G.o.d's thunder,'” said she, with perfect simplicity.
”Then you never saw a church? Did you never think of going into one?”
”A church?--Notre-Dame, the Pantheon?--I have seen them from a distance, when papa took me into town; but that was not very often. There are no churches like those in the Faubourg.”
”Which Faubourg did you live in?”
”In the Faubourg.”
”Yes, but which?”
”In the Rue de Charonne, madame.”
The inhabitants of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine never call that notorious district other than _the_ Faubourg. To them it is the one and only Faubourg; and manufacturers generally understand the words as meaning the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
”Did no one ever tell you what was right or wrong?”
”Mamma used to beat me when I did not do what pleased her.”
”But did you not know that it was very wicked to run away from your father and mother to go to live with an old man?”
Atala Judici gazed at the Baroness with a haughty stare, but made no reply.
”She is a perfect little savage,” murmured Adeline.
”There are a great many like her in the Faubourg, madame,” said the stove-fitter's wife.
”But she knows nothing--not even what is wrong. Good Heavens!--Why do you not answer me?” said Madame Hulot, putting out her hand to take Atala's.
Atala indignantly withdrew a step.
”You are an old fool!” said she. ”Why, my father and mother had had nothing to eat for a week. My mother wanted me to do much worse than that, I think, for my father thrashed her and called her a thief!
However, Monsieur Vyder paid all their debts, and gave them some money--oh, a bagful! And he brought me away, and poor papa was crying.