she saw how
entirely, and with a sort of savage delight, this man, formerly so
dreaded, and so proud of his giant strength, was reduced to impotence.
The old wretch, by these feelings, justified that cold-blooded idea of
La Rochefoucauld's, that "there is something in the misfortunes of our
best friends which does not displease us." The disgusting brat, with his
tawny cheeks and weasel face, enjoyed and participated in the mirth of
the one-eyed hag. The Schoolmaster tripped again, and the urchin
exclaimed:

"Open your peepers, old fellow; look about you. You are going the wrong
way. What capers you are cutting! Can't you see your way? Why don't you
wipe your eye-glasses?"

Unable to seize on the boy, the athletic murderer stopped, struck his
foot violently on the ground, put his enormous and hairy fists to his
eyes, and then uttered a sound which resembled the hoarse scream of a
muzzled tiger.

"Got a bad cough, I'm afraid, old chap!" said Bras Rouge's brat. "You're
hoarse, I'm afraid? I have some capital liquorice which a _gen-d'arme_
gave me. P'raps you'd like to try it?" and, taking up a handful of sand,
he threw it in the face of the ruffian.

Struck full in his countenance by this shower of gravel, the
Schoolmaster suffered still more severely by this last attack than by
the blow from the stone. Become pale, in spite of his livid and
cicatrised features, he extended his two arms suddenly in the form of a
cross, in a moment of inexpressible agony and despair, and, raising his
frightful face to heaven, he cried, in a voice of deep suffering:

"_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_"

This involuntary appeal to divine mercy by a man stained by every crime,
a bandit in whose presence but very recently the most resolute of his
fellows trembled, appeared like an interposition of Providence.

"Ha! ha! ha!" said the Chouette, in a mocking tone; "look at the thief
making the crucifix! You mistake your road, my man. It is the 'old one'
you should call to your help."

"A knife! Oh, for a knife to kill myself! A knife! since all the world
abandons me!" shrieked the wretch, gnawing his fists for very agony and
rage.

"A knife!--there's one in your pocket, cut-throat, and with an edge,
too. The little old man in the Rue du Roule, you know, one moonlight
night, and the cattle-dealer in the Poissy road, could tell the 'moles'
all about it. But if you want it, it's here."

The Schoolmaster, when thus instructed, changed the c