The man looked at his wife from under bushy black eyebrows--though eyebrows not much blacker than his baked face; then he thrust his hand into his pocket and drew forth five sols and weighed them in his hands as though they were gold pieces. He had stolen them that morning from the basket of a blind man sleeping in the sun outside St. Roch, when no one was looking. "Go, buy bread," he said. "Get something. I am starving. Go." "Bread--with these! They will not buy enough for one. And we are so hungry, she and I. See, the child weeps for hunger. Have you no more?" "Not a coin. Have you?" "Alas! God, He knows! Nothing. And we are dying of hunger." "How is it you are not at work, earning something?" "They will trust me no more. They fear I shall sell the goods confided to me. Who entrusts velvets, or silk, or laces to such as I, or lets such as I enter their shops to work there?" "What is to be done, then?" "Die," the woman said. "There is nought else to do." "Bah! In Paris! Imbecile! In Paris, full of wealth and food! Stay here till I return." And he went swiftly out. Some hours later, when the sun had sunk behind the great roof of the Cathedral, when the children were playing about beneath the spot where the statues were, and when the pigeons were seeking their niches, those three were eating a hearty meal, all seated on the floor, since there was neither chair nor table nor bed within the room; a meal consisting of a loaf, a piece of bacon, and some hard-boiled eggs. The woman and the child got but a poor share, 'tis true, their portions being the morsels which Vandecque tossed to them every now and again; while of a wine bottle, which he constantly applied to his mouth, they got nothing at all. Yet their hunger was appeased; they were glad enough to do without drink. * * * * * * The passing years brought changes to two of these outcasts, as it did to the wealthy in Paris. Vandecque's wife had died of the small-pox twelve months after his return; the adopted child, Vandecque's _niece_, Mdlle. Vauxcelles, was developing fast into a lovely girl; while as for Vandecque--well! the gallows bird, the man who had worn the iron collar round his neck and who bore upon his shoulders the brand, had disappeared, and in his place had come a grave, sedate person clad always in sombre clothes, yet a man conspicuous for the purity of his linen and lace and the neatness of his attire. While, although he had not as yet attained to the splendour of the Passage du Commerce, his rooms in the Rue du Paon were comfortable and there was no lack of either food, or drink, or fuel--the three things that the outcast who has escaped and triumphed over the miseries and memories of the past most seeks to make sure of in the future.