Altogether the situation was fast growing idyllic, and with Clémentine in her new rôle of _fiancée_, we thought that peace for us all was in sight. She set about her preparations at once, and did not hesitate to let me know that an agreeable wedding present would be house linen, however old and ragged, and a new hat for the wedding. I had looked for some preliminary begging as a matter of course, and I was already going through my linen closet to see what I could spare, when I caught Clémentine collecting wedding presents from me for which I had not been asked.
Until then I believed that, whatever crimes and vices might be laid at her door, dishonesty was not to be counted among them. I even boasted of her honesty as an excuse for my keeping her, nuisance as she was. I think I should have doubted her guilt if the report of it only had reached me. But I could not doubt the testimony of my own eyes when there was discovered, carefully packed in the capacious bag she always carried, one of my best napkins, a brand-new tea-cloth, and a few kitchen knives and forks that could not have strayed there of themselves. I could see in the articles selected her tender concern for the comfort of her _petit Anglais_ and her practical wish to prepare her establishment for his coming, and probably it showed her consideration for me that she had been content with such simple preparations. But the value of the things themselves and her object in appropriating them had nothing to do with the main fact that, after all we had done and endured, she was stealing from us. "We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and charity," Stevenson once wrote. Clémentine wiped out the one so successfully that she left me with no use for the other. I told her she must go, and this time I was in good earnest.
To Clémentine, however, nothing could have seemed less possible. She could not understand that a petty theft would make her less indispensable, or that I would strain at a gnat after swallowing so many camels. Within a week she was knocking at our door and expressing her willingness to resume her place in our chambers. She was not discouraged by the refusal to admit her, but a few days later, this time by letter, she again assured me that she waited to be recalled, and she referred to the desire of her _petit Anglais_ in the matter. She affected penitence, admitting that she had committed _une "Bêtisse"_--the spelling is hers--and adding: "_avoir âgit ainsi avec des maîtres aussi bons, ce n'est pas pardonable. Je vous assure que si un jour je devien riche, ou peut être plus pauvre, que dans ma richesse, comme dans ma plus grande misère, je ne pourrais jamais oublier les bons maîtres Monsieur et Madame, car jamais dans ma vie d'orpheline, je n'aie jamais rencontré d'aussi bons maîtres._" She also reminded me that she lived in the hope that _Madame_ would not forget the promised present of linen and a hat. I made no answer. Another letter followed, penitence now exchanged for reproaches. She expostulated with me for taking the bread out of the mouth of her _petit innocent_--Ernest--the little innocent whom the slums had nothing more to teach. This second letter met the same fate as the first, but her resources were not exhausted. In a third she tried the dignity of sorrow: "_Ma faute m'a rendu l'âme si triste_" and, as this had no effect, she used in a fourth the one genuine argument of them all, her hunger: "_Enfin il faut que je tâche d'oublier, mais en attendant je m'en mordrais peut être les poings plus d'une fois._" I was unmoved. I had spent too much emotion already upon Clémentine; also a neat little French girl had replaced her.