"What a pit of infamy!" cried Joseph; "there is something under it
all."
"Let us send for the woman who brought the letter; we may get the
preface of the story," said Bixiou.
The woman presently appeared, looking, as Bixiou observed, like
perambulating rags. She was, in fact, a mass of old gowns, one on top
of another, fringed with mud on account of the weather, the whole
mounted on two thick legs with heavy feet which were ill-covered by
ragged stockings and shoes from whose cracks the water oozed upon the
floor. Above the mound of rags rose a head like those that Charlet has
given to his scavenger-women, caparisoned with a filthy bandanna
handkerchief slit in the folds.
"What is your name?" said Joseph, while Bixiou sketched her, leaning
on an umbrella belonging to the year II. of the Republic.
"Madame Gruget, at your service. I've seen better days, my young
gentleman," she said to Bixiou, whose laugh affronted her. "If my poor
girl hadn't had the ill-luck to love some one too much, you wouldn't
see me what I am. She drowned herself in the river, my poor Ida,
--saving your presence! I've had the folly to nurse up a quaterne, and
that's why, at seventy-seven years of age, I'm obliged to take care of
sick folks for ten sous a day, and go--"
"--without clothes?" said Bixiou. "My grandmother nursed up a trey,
but she dressed herself properly."
"Out of my ten sous I have to pay for a lodging--"
"What's the matter with the lady you are nursing?"
"In the first place, she hasn't got any money; and then she has a
disease that scares the doctors.
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