twins came out, lowering their heads as if to hide them. Jean was the last to appear. Lise had a smile as she caught sight of his grimy forehead, and he blushed, delighted to see that he was not wholly displeasing to her.
She wore a simple, green-dotted white dress, slightly open at the neck, which seemed to set off her youthfulness and enhance the charm of a convent-bred modesty that was at once hesitant and eager in the presence of unlooked-for discoveries. The airy brightness of her new gown was in unforgettable and joyous contrast to her black schoolgirl uniform, solemn as a cemetery, as unrelieved and unexciting as a desert; and if she so frequently dropped her long lashes, as if to imitate Lamartine’s heroines or Louis Veuillot’s young ladies, it was rather to cast a stolen glance at the folds of her dress or the crescent-shaped fastening of her bodice. Like a youth from a poor family who is sporting a new necktie, she was conscious of her graceful, supple throat. In the convent she had kept it as jealously hidden as one would a love letter, but now she was both pleased and astonished to find it thus freely-exposed to the sun. In the presence of Jean, Lise was no longer laughing. Her lips, unskilled at feigning indifference, appeared to be pouting. Was it because she had furnished shelter to outlaws, or was she thinking merely of the brown curl with which she caressed her chin?
“How nice you look!” Jean’s smile was an embarrassed one. When she did not answer, he went on in a timid voice, his head held awkwardly to one side. “We’re not really thieves, you know.” At this point a lump ran down the leg of his trousers and a big apple, barely ripe, rolled over his toes and across the courtyard pavement. He dared not pick it up for fear of seeming too concerned.
“Just see what fine ones they are! It’s the season. If the police would only leave us alone. Will you have some?” Thrusting a nervous hand into the opening of his white shirt on which mud had formed little splotches and arabesques, he selected the choicest specimen and looked about for some place to wipe it but found none. “Go ahead and eat it.”
The Langevin brothers, a bewildered look on their faces, had come back, and now made the same offer with trembling hands. Smiling, she took the fruit, all that she could hold of it. “Is that the reason why the police were after you?”
At once the same words leaped from all three mouths: “And they never catch us!” They said nothing of Boucher. Lise’s astonishment caused them to puff out their chests.
How charming was this ragamuffin bravado! The spontaneous homage of the three marauders reminded her of Maid Marian and Robin Hood’s men. The hesitant breeze of her thoughts was lost in a vague, romantic reverie that had to do with things past even as her gaze rested unseeingly on the objects about her. For her, the present served merely as an echo of the past, and since the tendency of schoolgirl dreams is toward the ideal and the unreal, Lise found herself tossing in time and space like a bit of driftwood that is always on the point of settling somewhere but never does. The light-skimming, wavering glance with which she regarded the lads in front of her reflected this inner vagueness; and then, suddenly, a startled look came into her eyes as she stared at Jean’s leg. Bending over, he perceived the hole in his trousers through which his knee was visible.
“They are my everyday ones,” he stammered. He would have liked very much to show her his fine brown suit with the stripes.
The girl was becoming conscious of her surroundings once more: the clothesline strung with underwear, handkerchiefs, diapers, towels — nearly white, all of them, and flapping in the wind like the multitudinous symbols of people without a flag. Upon the neighbouring shed a tomcat was stoically sampling the unsavoury remains of a rat as Bédarovitch the ragman went down the rue Colomb crying in his hoarse, singsong voice: “Ra-a-a-ags — Ra-a-a-ags —” Abruptly confronted with this disturbing reality, Lise dropped her armful of fruit.
“You mustn’t throw it away!” said Jean, as he bounded forward to recover the apple he had given her. “It’s the best of the lot.”
“Aren’t you coming back, Lise?” Madame Lévesque’s heavy voice was audible a short distance away.
Frightened at this, her daughter now pushed the marauders out, whispering to Jean, who was the last to leave: “Whatever you do, don’t tell anybody.”
He gave her an understanding smile. “My name,” he said, with a strange tightening of the throat, “is Jean Colin. I’ll bring you some plums tomorrow.” He came near stumbling over the threshold as he backed out.
Lise’s face was red; for the Abbé Charton was standing there, watching the youths in amazement as they emerged from the garden. Coming up to the convent miss, the amiably smiling priest studied her closely.
“I’ve brought you my arrangement of Parce Domine for three voices. Here it is.”
Glancing back, the lads laughingly whispered to one another that the Abbé Charton was making up to the family because Zépherin Lévesque had just bought an automobile. Jean Colin smiled up at the telephone poles. So the pretty stranger was going to sing that evening!
Denis Boucher kept an eye on the Mulots by way of making sure that they did not turn him in. It gave him satisfaction to see the small lads deflating the tires of the police car as the older ones dispersed. “They’re afraid!” he muttered to himself. He laughed at the sight of the gendarmes coming back empty-handed from the chase. His friends were safe. Ah! How proud he was of being the pet aversion of those Mulots! How he loved to see them tremble like rats in front of his eyes! And the same went for the Soyeux who made so much of their wealth and intellectual pretensions. Intellectuals! He had it in him to flatten them like the leaves of those books they were always talking about. As for the women! He would never love any of them but would drag them after him like logs all his life long. Only they would not be the girls of Saint-Sauveur, for they had known him when he was small and his mother used to beat him for starting fires or throwing stones at passers-by. The conquest of the world would begin at the frontiers of this “Sewer Town” (so called because of the water from the Upper Town with which it was flooded in the rainy season), of which he called himself the king. His reflections were interrupted by the Abbé Bongrain.
“Was the harvest a good one?” the priest called to him jovially. He was bringing wood to Méo Nolin, who had injured his fingers and who received donations from the Saint-Vincent de Paul Society. The Abbé Bongrain took a sort of stern pleasure in manual labour and was not in the least mindful of the twigs and bits of bark that clung to his cassock. Boucher gave him a friendly look.
“It was all right,” he said, “but there was a little rumpus. Here, catch it!”
The priest so beloved by the Mulots (he was like an almoner to them) caught the apple which Denis tossed him and, mopping the sweat from his forehead, took a hearty bite.
With a nervous laugh, the young man leaped the fence, landing in the middle of his brother Gaston’s poultry yard. The frightened hens found refuge by huddling against the weird-looking bosoms of the roosters which now began scolding because the intruder’s feet were a threat to the chickens pecking the rich soil.
A hoarse anxious cry rang out: “Careful, Denis — Crazy — my chickens!”
Gaston came running up as fast as he could, his hips swaying with his uneven gait. He had a man’s face on a child’s body, a body that looked as if someone had started to demolish it with a sledge hammer. His brow was lined with wrinkles, and he seemed to be forever engaged in solving some problem. There was a crease at the corners of his mouth that conveyed an impression of disillusionment and, at the same time of naiveté. It gave him the abnormal appearance of those who have suffered before they have lived. Rickety and useless, his long arms swung by the side of his slanting body like tropical creepers.
