Her infancy was a long alternation of beatings and caresses, equally furious.

She had lived as best she could, on sweetmeats and damaged fruit; so that now her stomach could stand anything.

At twelve years old she was as thin as a nail, as green as a June apple, and more depraved than the inmates of the prison of St.Lazare.Prudhomme would have said that this precocious little hussy was totally destitute of morality.

She had not the slightest idea what morality was.

She thought the world was full of honest people living like her mother, and her mother's friends.