"A devilish sight more than we do our job up here! I'm a'most frost-bitten!" cried the bailiff, blowing the ends of his fingers. "Come, old fellow, make haste, will you! Just look sharp! You can snivel, you know, as we go along. Why, how the devil can we help it, if your brat has kicked the bucket?" "These beggars always have such a lot of children, if they have nothing else!" "Yes, so they have," responded Malicorne. Then, slapping Morel on the shoulder, he called out in a loud voice, "I tell you what it is, my friend, we're not going to be kept dawdling here all day,--our time is precious. So either out with the stumpy, or march off to prison, without any more bother!" "Prison!" exclaimed a clear, youthful voice; "take M. Morel to prison!" and a bright, beaming face appeared at the door. "Ah, Mlle. Rigolette," cried the weeping children, as they recognised the happy, healthful countenance of their young protectress and friend, "these wicked men are going to take our poor father away, and put him in prison! And sister Adèle is just dead!" "Dead!" cried the kind-hearted girl, her dark eyes filling with compassionating tears; "poor little thing! But it cannot be true that your father is in danger of a prison;" and, almost stupefied with surprise, she gazed alternately from the children to Morel, and from him to the bailiffs. "I say, my girl," said Bourdin, approaching Rigolette, "as you do seem to have the use of your senses, just make this good man hear reason, will you? His child has just died. Well, that can't be helped now; but, you see, he is a-keeping of us, because we're a-waiting to take him to the debtors' prison, being sheriffs' officers, duly sworn in and appointed. Tell him so!" "Then it is true!" exclaimed the feeling girl. "True? I should say it was and no mistake! Now, don't you see, while the mother is busy with the dead babby--and, bless you! she's got it there, hugging it up in bed, and won't part with it!--she won't notice us? So I want the father to be off while she isn't thinking nothing about it!" "Good God! Good God!" replied Rigolette, in deep distress; "what is to be done?" "Done? Why, pay the money, or go to prison! There is nothing between them two ways. If you happen to have two or three thousand francs by you you can oblige him with, why, shell out, and we'll be off, and glad enough to be gone!" "How can you," cried Rigolette, "be so barbarous as to make a jest of such distress as this?" "Well, then," rejoined the other man, "all joking apart, if you really do wish to be useful, try to prevent the woman from seeing us take her husband away. You will spare them both a very disagreeable ten minutes!"