no mistaking them for father and son.
There was the same quick and cunning look, joined to that impudent,
hardened, and knavish air, which is peculiar to the scamp (_voyou_) of
Paris,--that fearful type of precocious depravity, that real 'hemp-seed'
(_graine de bagne_), as they style it, in the horrible slang of the
gaol. The forehead of the brat was half lost beneath a thatch of
yellowish locks, as harsh and stiff as horse-hair. Reddish-coloured
trousers and a gray blouse, confined by a leather girdle, completed
Tortillard's costume, whose nickname was derived from his infirmity. He
stood close to his father, standing on his sound leg like a heron by the
side of a marsh.

"Ah, here is the darling one (_mome_)!" said the Schoolmaster. "Finette,
night is coming on, and time is pressing; we must profit by the daylight
which is left to us."

"You are right, my man; I will ask the father to spare his darling."

"Good day, old friend," said Bras Rouge, addressing the Schoolmaster, in
a voice which was cracked, sharp, and shrill. "What can I do for you?"

"Why, if you could spare your 'small boy' to my mistress for a quarter
of an hour, she has lost something which he could help her to look for."

Bras Rouge winked his eye and made a sign to the Schoolmaster, and then
said to the child:

"Tortillard, go with madame."

The hideous brat hopped forward and took hold of the "one-eyed's" hand.

"Love of a bright boy, come along! There is a child!" said Finette. "And
how like his father! He is not like Pegriotte, who always pretended to
have a pain in her side when she came near me,--a little baggage!"

"Come, come away!--be off, Finette! Keep your weather-eye open, and
bright lookout. I await you here."

"I won't be long. Go first, Tortillard."

The one-eyed hag and the little cripple went up the slippery steps.

"Finette, take the umbrella," the brigand called out.

[Illustration: "'_Ah, Here is the 'Darling One'!_'"
Original Etching by Adrian Marcel]

"It would be in the way, my man," said the old woman, who quickly
disappeared with Tortillard in the midst of the fog, which thickened
with the twilight, and the hollow murmur of the wind as it moaned
through the thick and leafless branches of the tall elms in the Champs
Elysees.

"Let us go in," said Rodolph.

It was requisite to stoop in passing in at the door of the cabaret,
which was divided into two apartments. In one was a bar and a
broken-down billiard-ta