While Marius was bending on the young girl an astonished and painful glance, she was walking about the garret with the boldness of a spectre, and without troubling herself in the slightest about her state of nudity. At some moments her unfastened and torn chemise fell almost to her waist. She moved the chairs about, disturbed the toilette articles on the chest of drawers, felt Marius's clothes, and rummaged in every corner. "Why," she said, "you have a looking-glass!" And she hummed, as if she had been alone, bits of vaudeville songs and wild choruses, which her guttural and hoarse voice rendered mournful. But beneath this boldness there was something constrained, alarmed, and humiliated, for effrontery is a disgrace. Nothing could well be more sad than to see her fluttering about the room with the movement of a broken-winged bird startled by a dog. It was palpable that with other conditions of education and destiny, the gay and free demeanor of this girl might have been something gentle and charming. Among animals, the creature born to be a dove is never changed into an osprey; that is only possible with men. Marius was thinking, and left her alone, and she walked up to the table. "Ah!" she said, "books." A gleam darted from her glassy eye: she continued, and her accent expressed the attitude of being able to boast of something to which no human creature is insensible,-- "I know how to read." She quickly seized the book lying on the table, and read rather fluently,-- "General Bauduin received orders to carry with the five battalions of his brigade the Château of Hougomont, which is in the centre of the plain of Waterloo--" She broke off. "Ah, Waterloo, I know all about that. It was a battle in which my father was engaged, for he served in the army. We are thorough Bonapartists, we are. Waterloo was fought against the English." She laid down the book, took up a pen, and exclaimed, "And I can write, too." She dipped the pen in the ink, and turned to Marius, saying,-- "Would you like a proof? Stay, I will write a line to show you." And ere he had time to answer she wrote on a sheet of white paper in the middle of the table, "_Here are the slops_." Then throwing down the pen, she added,-- "There are no errors in spelling, as you can see, for my sister and I were well educated. We have not always been what we are now, we were not made--" Here she stopped, fixed her glassy eye on Marius, and burst into a laugh, as she said, with an intonation which contained every possible agony, blended with every possible cynicism,-- "Bah!" And then she began humming these words, to a lively air,-- "J'ai faim, mon père, Pas de fricot. J'ai froid, ma mère, Pas de tricot. Grelotte, Lolotte! Sanglote, Jacquot!" She had scarce completed this verse, ere she exclaimed,--