He was faint from hunger, for he had been
in the fields since early morning, with nothing for his midday lunch but
a handful of boiled chestnuts. The smell of the fresh bread tantalized
him beyond endurance. Oh, to be able to take a mouthful,--just one
little mouthful of that brown, sweet crust!
He put his face down close, and shut his eyes, drawing in the delicious
odor with long, deep breaths. What bliss it would be to have that whole
loaf for his own,--he, little Jules, who was to have no supper that
night! He held it up in the moonlight, hungrily looking at it on every
side. There was not a broken place to be found anywhere on its surface;
not one crack in all that hard, brown glaze of crust, from which he
might pinch the tiniest crumb.
For a moment a mad impulse seized him to tear it in pieces, and eat
every scrap, regardless of the reckoning with Brossard afterwards. But
it was only for a moment. The memory of his last beating stayed his
hand. Then, fearing to dally with temptation, lest it should master him,
he thrust the bread under his arm, and ran every remaining step of
the way home.
Brossard took the loaf from him, and pointed with it to the stairway,--a
mute command for Jules to go to bed at once. Tingling with a sense of
injustice, the little fellow wanted to shriek out in all his hunger and
misery, defying this monster of a man; but a struggling sparrow might as
well have tried to turn on the hawk that held it.
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