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Updated: June 29, 2025
Thus talking, Beauchene puffed and coughed and spat, exhaling meantime the odor of tobacco, alcohol, and musk, which he always brought back from his "sprees," while his wife smiled affectionately before the others as was her wont, but directed at him glances full of despair and disgust whenever Madame Angelin turned her head.
And carrying her child in her arms she insisted on accompanying her sister and their friend to the first floor. During the last half-hour Constance and Madame Angelin had been deep in consultation with Madame Bourdieu. The former had not given her name, but had simply played the part of an obliging friend accompanying another on an occasion of some delicacy.
For Norine, the lady-delegate was like some queen who had fallen from her throne amid frightful and undeserved sufferings. "Run away, go and play, my darling," Norine repeated to her boy: "you are tiring madame." "Tiring me, oh no!" exclaimed Madame Angelin, conquering her emotion. "On the contrary, he does me good. Kiss me, kiss me again, my pretty fellow."
As soon as Madame Angelin had clasped Marianne's hands with her own trembling fingers, she also uttered in low, stammering accents, those despairing words: "Ah! what a frightful misfortune, an only son!" Her eyes filled with tears, and she would not sit down before going for a moment to see the body in the adjoining room.
She set her last joy and found the great consolation of her desolate, childless life in thus remitting alms to poor mothers whose little ones laughed at her joyously as soon as they saw her arrive with her hands full of good things. One day when the weather was frightful, all rain and wind, Madame Angelin lingered for a little while in Norine's room.
But Marianne was answering Madame Angelin: "Oh I don't think that at all likely. Why, I'm becoming an old woman. You forget that I am already a grandmother. Here, look at that!"
Then came swift and overwhelming savagery. The three bandits, Alexandre, Richard, and Alfred, who had been crouching low, sprang forward and threw themselves upon Madame Angelin with such hungry, wolfish violence that she was thrown to the ground. Alfred, however, being a coward, then left her to the two others, and hastened with Toinette to the breach in order to keep watch.
Madame Bourdieu, with the keen scent characteristic of her profession, divined a possible customer in that inquisitive lady who put such strange questions to her. However, a rather painful scene took place, for realizing that she could not forever deceive Madame Angelin with false hopes, Madame Bourdieu decided to tell the truth her case was hopeless.
As a delegate of the Poor Relief Service, intrusted with one of the Grenelle districts, Madame Angelin had found Norine among the pensioners over whom she was appointed to watch.
Meantime Norine's little boy had taken his stand in front of Madame Angelin, for he knew very well that, on the days when the good lady called, there was some dessert at supper in the evening. He smiled at her with the bright eyes which lit up his pretty fair face, crowned with tumbled sunshiny hair.
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