It might have been, but for her little Ernest. I do believe that child was born for no other end than my special annoyance. His illness was only the beginning. When he was well, she brought him to see me one afternoon, nominally that he might thank me, but really, I fear, in hope of an extra sixpence or shilling. He was five years old and fairly large and well developed for his age, but there could never have been, there never could be, a less attractive child. His face had none of the prettiness of his mother's, though all the shrewdness: in knowledge of the gutter he looked fifty. Then and afterwards, ashamed as I was of it, I instinctively shrank from him. Anywhere, except in the comic ballad, a "horribly fast little cad" of a baby is as tragic a figure as I care to encounter, and to me the little Ernest was all the more so because of the repugnance with which he inspired me. Clémentine made a great pretence of adoring him. She carried a sadly battered photograph of him in her pocket, and would pull it out at intervals when anybody was looking, and kiss it rapturously. Otherwise her admiration took the form of submitting to his tyranny. She could do far less with him than he with her, and _la vieille grandmère_ was as wax in his rough little hands. His mornings, while his mother was at work, were spent in the grimy London courts and streets, where children swarm like vermin and babies grow old in vice. In the afternoon, after she left our chambers, he dragged her through the _Quartier_, from shop to shop, she with her giggling "_Bon jour, M. Edmond_" or "_Comment ça va, Madame Pierre_"--for though we live in London we are not of it, but of France,--he with his hand held out for the cakes and oranges and pennies he knew would drop into it: a pair of the most accomplished beggars in London.
As time went on, and Clémentine did not find the extra work for her afternoons that she had promised to find, I realized that she would keep on wasting her free half day, and that he would go from bad to worse if he were not got away from her and out of the streets. I should have known better than to occupy myself with him, but his old shrewd face haunted me until I remonstrated with Clémentine, and represented to her the future she was preparing for him. If she could not take care of him, she should send him to school where there were responsible people who could. I suggested a charitable institution of some kind in France where he would be brought up among her people. But this she fought against with a determination I could not understand, until it came out that she had profited by the English law which forces a father to contribute to his illegitimate child's support, and from Ernest's she received weekly three shillings and sixpence. She much preferred to risk her little Ernest's morals than an income that came of itself, and she feared she could no longer claim it if he were beyond the reach of the English courts. She was as doubtful of the result if he were got into a charity school in England, for if he cost her nothing the father might not be compelled to pay. She could be obstinate on occasions, and I was in despair. But by some fortunate chance, a convent at Hampstead was heard of where the weekly charge would just be covered by the father's allowance, and as Clémentine could find no argument against it, she had to give in.