When the prisoners came into the yard, running and crying out, it was easy to discern that it was not alone the pleasure of leaving their work that made them so noisy. After having hurried forth by the only gate which led to this yard, the crowd spread out and made a ring around a misshapen being, whom they assailed with shouts. She was a small woman, from thirty-six to forty years of age; short, round-shouldered, deformed, and with her neck buried between shoulders of unequal height. They had snatched off her black cap, and her hair, which was flaxen, or rather a pale yellow, coarse, matted, and mingled with gray, fell over her low and stupid features. She was clad in a blue loose gown, like the other prisoners, and had under her right arm a small bundle, wrapped up in a miserable, ragged, checked pocket-handkerchief. With her left elbow she endeavoured to ward off the blows aimed at her. Nothing could be more lamentably ludicrous than the visage of this unhappy woman. She was hideous and distorted in figure, with projecting features, wrinkled, tanned, and dirty, which were pierced with two holes for nostrils, and two small, red, bloodshot eyes. By turns wrathful and imploring, she scolded and entreated; but they laughed even more at her complaints than her threats. This woman was the plaything of the prisoners. One thing ought, however, to have protected her from such ill-usage,--she was evidently about to become a mother; but her ugliness, her imbecility, and the custom they had of considering her as a victim intended for common sport, rendered her persecutors implacable, in spite of their usual respect for maternity. Amongst the fiercest enemies of Mont Saint-Jean (that was the unhappy wretch's name), La Louve was conspicuous. La Louve was a strapping girl of twenty, active, and powerfully grown, with regular features. Her coarse black hair was varied by reddish shades, whilst her blood suffused her skin with its hue; a brown down shaded her thin lips; her chestnut eyebrows, thick and projecting, were united over her large and fierce eyes. There was something violent, savage, and brutal in the expression of this woman's physiognomy,--a sort of habitual sneer, which curled her upper lip during a fit of rage, and, exposing her white and wide-apart teeth, accounted for her name of La Louve (the she-wolf). Yet in that countenance there was more of boldness and insolence than cruelty; and, in a word, it was seen that, rather become vicious than born so, this woman was still susceptible of certain good impulses, as the inspectress had told Madame d'Harville. "Alas! alas! What have I done?" exclaimed Mont Saint-Jean, struggling in the midst of her companions. "Why are you so cruel to me?" "Because it is so amusing." "Because you are only fit to be teased." "It is your business." "Look at yourself, and you will see that you have no right to complain."