The poor woman, in
order to save her husband from the scaffold, said before she died that
she had hurt herself by falling on the edge of a tub. L'Assommoir.
BIJARD (LALIE), daughter of the preceding, a child of eight when her
mother died, had acted as the little mother of the family. "Without a
word said, quite of her own accord, she took the dead woman's place, to
such an extent that her foolish brute of a father, to make the likeness
complete, battered about the daughter now as he had battered the mother
before. When he came in drunk, he felt the need of a woman to attack. He
did not even notice what a tiny little thing Lalie was; he hit her as he
would have hit a grown woman. He beat her shamelessly, he kicked her for
a yes or no; and she took it all with a resigned look in her beautiful
eyes, without a murmur. Then when her father was tired of kicking her
from corner to corner of the room, she waited until she had the strength
to pick herself up, and then went back to her work. It was part of her
daily task to be beaten." As the result of this infamous treatment
the child died, but again the man unfortunately escaped punishment.
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