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CHAPTER XXII
THE LITTLE ONE WHO WAS
CRYING IN VOLUME TWO
On the day following that on which these events took place
in the house on the Boulevard de l’Hopital, a child, who
seemed to be coming from the direction of the bridge of
Austerlitz, was ascending the side-alley on the right in the
direction of the Barriere de Fontainebleau.
Night had fully come.
This lad was pale, thin, clad in rags, with linen trousers
in the month of February, and was singing at the top of his
voice.
At the corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier, a bent old
woman was rummaging in a heap of refuse by the light
of a street lantern; the child jostled her as he passed, then
recoiled, exclaiming:—
‘Hello! And I took it for an enormous, enormous dog!’
He pronounced the word enormous the second time with
a jeering swell of the voice which might be tolerably well
represented by capitals: ‘an enormous, ENORMOUS dog.’
The old woman straightened herself up in a fury.