ad been smashed by
a blow, while her unwholesome looking mouth was always slobbering with
greediness, or uttering something vile. Her hair was thick and untidy,
and a regular nest for vermin, to which may be added a thin, feverish
body, with a limping walk. In short, she was a perfect monster, and yet
all the young men of the neighborhood had made love to her, and whoever
had been so honored, longed for her society again.

From the time that she was twelve, she had been the mistress of every
fellow in the village. She had corrupted boys of her own age in every
conceivable manner and place.

Young men at the risk of imprisonment, and even steady, old, notable and
venerable men, such as the farmer at Eclausiaux, Monsieur Martin, the
ex-mayor and other highly respectable men, had been taken by the manners
of that creature, and the reason why the rural policeman was not severe
upon them, in spite of his love for summoning people before the
magistrates, was, so people said, that he would have been obliged to take
out a summons against himself.

The consequence was that she had grown up without being interfered with,
and was the mistress of every fellow in the village, as the school-master
said; who had himself been one of _the fellows_. But the most curious
part of the business was that no one was jealous. They handed her on from
one to the other, and when someone expressed his astonishment at this to
her one day, she said to this unintelligent stranger:

"Is everybody not satisfied?"

And then, how could any one of them, even if he had been jealous, have
monopolized her? They had no hold on her. She was not selfish, and though
she accepted all gifts, whether in kind or in money, she never asked for
anything and she even appeared to prefer paying herself after her own
fashion, by stealing. All she seemed to care about as her reward was
pilfering, and a crown put into her hand, gave her less pleasure than
a halfpenny which she had stolen. Neither was it any use to dream of
ruling her as the sole male, or as the proud master of the hen roost,
for which of them, no matter how broad shouldered he was, would have been
capable of it? Some had tried to vanquish her, but in vain.

How then, could any of them claim to be her master? It would have been
the same as wishing to have the sole right of baking their bread in the
common oven, in which the whole village baked.

But there was one man who formed the exception, and that w