Thus the free and joyous little child of the Marais learned by degrees to repress all liveliness and to make herself, as best she could, an automaton. V HISTORY OF POOR COUSINS IN THE HOME OF RICH ONES One evening, which marked the beginning of Pierrette's second phase of life in her cousin's house, the child, whom the three guests had not seen during the evening, came into the room to kiss her relatives and say good-night to the company. Sylvie turned her cheek coldly to the pretty creature, as if to avoid kissing her. The motion was so cruelly significant that the tears sprang to Pierrette's eyes. "Did you prick yourself, little girl?" said the atrocious Vinet. "What is the matter?" asked Sylvie, severely. "Nothing," said the poor child, going up to Rogron. "Nothing?" said Sylvie, "that's nonsense; nobody cries for nothing." "What is it, my little darling?" said Madame Vinet. "My rich cousin isn't as kind to me as my poor grandmother was," sobbed Pierrette. "Your grandmother took your money," said Sylvie, "and your cousin will leave you hers." The colonel and the lawyer glanced at each other. "I would rather be robbed and loved," said Pierrette. "Then you shall be sent back whence you came." "But what has the dear little thing done?" asked Madame Vinet. Vinet gave his wife the terrible, fixed, cold look with which men enforce their absolute dominion. The hapless helot, punished incessantly for not having the one thing that was wanted of her, a fortune, took up her cards. "What has she done?" said Sylvie, throwing up her head with such violence that the yellow wall-flowers in her cap nodded. "She is always looking about to annoy us. She opened my watch to see the inside, and meddled with the wheel and broke the mainspring. Mademoiselle pays no heed to what is said to her. I am all day long telling her to take care of things, and I might just as well talk to that lamp." Pierrette, ashamed at being reproved before strangers, crept softly out of the room. "I am thinking all the time how to subdue that child," said Rogron. "Isn't she old enough to go to school?" asked Madame Vinet. Again she was silenced by a look from her husband, who had been careful to tell her nothing of his own or the colonel's schemes. "This is what comes of taking charge of other people's children!" cried the colonel. "You may still have some of your own, you or your brother. Why don't you both marry?" Sylvie smiled agreeably on the colonel. For the first time in her life she met a man to whom the idea that she could marry did not seem absurd. "Madame Vinet is right," cried Rogron; "perhaps teaching would keep Pierrette quiet. A master wouldn't cost much." The colonel's remark so preoccupied Sylvie that she made no answer to her brother.