These three faces, framed by the window, recalled the puffy cherubs
floating among the clouds that surround God the Father. The
apprentices snuffed up the exhalations of the street with an eagerness
that showed how hot and poisonous the atmosphere of their garret must
be. After pointing to the singular sentinel, the most jovial, as he
seemed, of the apprentices retired and came back holding an instrument
whose hard metal pipe is now superseded by a leather tube; and they
all grinned with mischief as they looked down on the loiterer, and
sprinkled him with a fine white shower of which the scent proved that
three chins had just been shaved. Standing on tiptoe, in the farthest
corner of their loft, to enjoy their victim's rage, the lads ceased
laughing on seeing the haughty indifference with which the young man
shook his cloak, and the intense contempt expressed by his face as he
glanced up at the empty window-frame.
At this moment a slender white hand threw up the lower half of one of
the clumsy windows on the third floor by the aid of the sash runners,
of which the pulley so often suddenly gives way and releases the heavy
panes it ought to hold up. The watcher was then rewarded for his long
waiting. The face of a young girl appeared, as fresh as one of the
white cups that bloom on the bosom of the waters, crowned by a frill
of tumbled muslin, which gave her head a look of exquisite innocence.
Though wrapped in brown stuff, her neck and shoulders gleamed here and
there through little openings left by her movements in sleep.
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