"What! I free to ask of you a prisoner?" "Why not? I was fed, clothed, lodged, at the cost of government; all I gained was so much profit. But knowing my brother-in-law was a good workman, and you a good manager and worker, I was quite easy, and melted my 'tin' with my eyes shut, and my mouth open." "My husband was a good workman, that is true; but he became dissipated. However, thanks to this unexpected aid, I took courage again. My eldest girl began to earn a little, and we were happy, except when we remembered that you were at Melun. Work went well with us, and my children were well clad, and wanted for nothing hardly, and that gave me good heart; and I had actually saved thirty-three francs, when suddenly my husband returned. I had not seen him for a year; and when he found me so well off and tidily dressed, he stood for nothing, but took my money and lived with us without working, getting drunk every day, and beating me when I complained. And that is not all. He gave up a small room adjoining ours to a woman with whom he lived openly as his mistress; so I had that indignity to endure for the second time. He soon began to make away with the few poor things I had managed to get together; so, foreseeing what would be the end of such conduct, I went to a lawyer who lived in the same house, and begged him to advise me how to act to prevent my husband from taking the very bed from me and my children." "Why, there needed no lawyer, I should think, to tell you that the only thing you had to do was to turn your husband out of your doors." "Ah, but I could not,--the law gave me no power to do so. The lawyer told me that, as 'head of the family,' my husband could take up his abode wherever I dwelt, and was not compelled to labour unless he liked; that it was very hard for me to have to maintain him, and endure his ill-treatment into the bargain, but that he recommended me to submit to it, though certainly the circumstance of his having a mistress living under the same roof entitled me to demand separation from 'bed and board,' as he called it; and further, that as I would bring witnesses to prove his having repeatedly struck me, and otherwise ill-treated me, I could institute a suit against him, but that it would cost me, at the very least, from four to five hundred francs to obtain a perfect separation from him. Only think what a sum,--as much as I should earn in a year! And who would lend me so much money, which would have to be repaid heaven knows how? For four or five hundred francs is a perfect fortune." "Yet there is one very simple means of amassing the money," replied Pique-Vinaigre, bitterly; "that of living upon air during the twelve months it would take you to earn that sum, working all the same, but denying yourself even the necessaries of life; and I am only surprised the lawyer did not advise you to starve yourself and your children, or any other kind-hearted expediency." "You always make a jest of everything, brother!"