“You _are_ old, M. Goudron,” she said, “and you are not good. Papa is good, though he is old, but not you. He would do whatever I ask him. If you will not give Blanchette what she wants, I will ask papa, and he will do it for Janey; and then what Ursule gets from God will be for papa, and not for you; and all the village will say, ‘Down with that old Père Goudron and _vive l’Anglais_!’ Nobody loves you, M. Goudron,” continued Janey, “not one. You are a very bad old man; you never do anything that is kind. It would be better to be a wolf in the wood than you, for the wolf would not understand, and you hear me talking to you. And when you die, which can’t be long, you will be made into an old cinder” (Janey said _tison_). “You are very like one now; I think you must feel the fire burning you already,” cried Janey, vindictively; “you are so dried up and withered and wrinkled and wicked. _Tiens_, Blanchette, do not ask him any more; I will get it from papa.” Janey put out her hand majestically, interposing her small person between the old man whom she had denounced and poor Blanchette, who had risen to her feet and turned her large astonished eyes, full of tears, upon the child. Janey, in her four feet of stature, towered over them all, her pretty hair streaming back as on a breeze of indignation, her eyes blazing. No consideration of circumstances or possibilities affected Janey. She was sublime, for she was absolute, above all reasoning. And while Blanchette started to her feet, half in fear of her grandfather, half in wondering hope at the impulse of this little heroine, the old man, on his side, cowered and shrank before her. He had one humanity in him, he was fond of little children; and Janey, the strange little foreign creature, exercised a kind of fascination over him. He tried to change his grin into a conciliatory smile. “_Tenez, tenez, ma petite demoiselle_,” he said, with a broken sort of whimper in his voice; “do not speak to an old man so. When you ask me for something in your pretty little voice, I will do it. I am not wicked, as you say; it is they who are wicked, robbing me of everything. But you are a little angel. Naturally your papa will do whatever you ask him. He is a _milord_; he is rich, very rich, like all the English; and I too will do what you ask me, though I am not rich, but poor. But you must not say ‘_À bas le père Goudron!_’” cried the old man again with a whimper. He twisted all his lean person into a grimace of deprecating amiability, drawing his long legs under him, clasping his bony hands, putting his grotesque head on one side, while Janey stood impassive, disapproving, majestic, stretching out one small arm as a shield over Blanchette, who for her part, arrested in the very act of weeping, stood with her pretty lips apart, her eyes very widely opened, and the tears dropping down her cheeks.