The idiot's curiosity was excited by the haste with which the two bailiffs approached the lapidary, who would not part with the body of his infant. The old woman ceased to howl, rose from her bed, slowly approached Morel, and passing her hideous and stupid face over his shoulder, gazed vacantly on the corpse of her grandchild. The features of the idiot retained their usual expression of ferocity. After a little time, she uttered a sort of hoarse, hollow groan, like a hungry beast, and returning to her bed, she threw herself upon it, crying out, "I am hungry! I am hungry!" "You see, gentlemen, this poor little girl, just four years old-- Adele; yes, she was named Adele. Only last night, she fondly returned my caresses--and now--look at her! You will, perhaps, say that I have one less to feed, and that I ought not to murmur," said the artisan, with a haggard look. The poor man's reason began to totter under so many repeated shocks. "Morel, I want my child; I will have her!" said Madeleine. "True, true," replied the lapidary, "each in turn, that is but fair!" He went and laid the child in the arms of his wife. Then, hiding his face between his hands, he groaned bitterly. Madeleine, almost as frenzied as her husband, laid the child in the straw of her couch, and watched it with a sort of savage jealousy; while the other children were kneeling round in tears. The bailiffs, for a moment softened by the death of the child, soon returned to their accustomed brutality of conduct. "Oh, look here, my friend," said Malicorne to the lapidary, "your child is dead; it is unfortunate, but we are all mortal; we cannot help it, nor can you, so there's an end of it. We have an extra job to do to-day--a _swell_ to grab." Morel did not hear the man. Completely lost in mournful contemplation, the artisan said to himself, in a hollow and broken voice: "It will be necessary to bury my poor little girl--to watch her here till they come to carry her away. But how?--we have nothing! And the coffin!-- who will give us credit? Oh, a little coffin for a child of four years old ought not to cost much! And then we shall want no bearers! One can take it under his arm. Ha! ha! ha!" added he, with a frightful burst of laughter, "how lucky I am! She might perhaps have lived to be eighteen, Louise's age, and no one would have given me credit for a large coffin!" "Egad! this chap seems as though he would lose his senses!" said Bourdin to Malicorne. "Look at him; he quite frightens me! and how the old idiot howls with hunger! What a queer lot!" "We must, however, make a finish; although the arrest of this beggar is only for seventy-six francs, seventy-five centimes, it is only right that we should swell the costs to two hundred and forty or fifty francs. It is the _wolf_ who pays." "You mean who has to _fork out_--for this poor devil here will have to pay the fiddler, since it is he that must dance."