"
Thereupon Celine cleared one of the chairs on which lay a handful of
scraps of wood, picked up on some waste ground.
The bare and fireless room was assuredly also a breadless one. Pierre
could divine the absence of the bread-winner, the disappearance of the
man who represents will and strength in the home, and on whom one still
relies even when weeks have gone by without work. He goes out and scours
the city, and often ends by bringing back the indispensable crust which
keeps death at bay. But with his disappearance comes complete
abandonment, the wife and child in danger, destitute of all prop and
help.
Pierre, who had sat down and was looking at that poor, little, blue-eyed
girl, to whose lips a smile returned in spite of everything, could not
keep from questioning her on another point. "So you don't go to school,
my child?" said he.
She faintly blushed and answered: "I've no shoes to go in."
He glanced at her feet, and saw that she was wearing a pair of ragged old
list-slippers, from which her little toes protruded, red with cold.
"Besides," she continued, "Mamma Theodore says that one doesn't go to
school when one's got nothing to eat. Mamma Theodore wanted to work but
she couldn't, because her eyes got burning hot and full of water. And so
we don't know what to do, for we've had nothing left since yesterday, and
if Uncle Toussaint can't lend us twenty sous it'll be all over.
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