Oh, this is nowhere near done. This story shall contain at least thirteen chapters, each one about a different obscure book character. Some aren't as obscure, such as young Azelma, some *extremely* obscure, like Madame Albertine. Mme. Albertine is the best. Who remembers her? Winner gets Petit Gervais' 40 sous piece!

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J'ai la dalle. No other words can describe it so well. It was that moment when you were so truly ravenous that your stomach felt as if a dalle-a paving stone-was pulling it down. Your entire body seized up each time the hunger pangs crested, your head lolling about like it was attached by a mere string. Your eyes, constantly peeled for food, were blurring out the world. The world already ignored you, pay it back and ignore it.

I focused only on two things: the path ahead of me, and a mindless game. I had my money for my supper, all the money I owned, tucked away in the dirty creases of my palm. Every so often, I would stop, throw these coins in the air and attempt to catch them on the back of my hand. After so long a time of playing this game, I was quite skilled at it. However, I hated the game. Each time I caught the coins, it was another second I had my dalle.

I began a simple little ditty I learned in my homeland of Savoy, a song full of happiness and the like. I was exactly like the song's subject, I smiled at all, my life was dismal but fine. I was one of those lucky creatures whose spirits were chronically high and full of mirth.  The hunger was horrible, mind twisting, even de-habilitating, but I kept walking hopefully, my feet as eager to be fed as my stomach.

I was going down the gravel path, singing to the beat of my growling stomach. My stomach swirled raucously, and I braced myself for the hunger pang that was sure to follow. I braced myself, my coins mid-air, and the dalle grew into a boulder.

I felt two coins hit my hand, and followed the third, my forty sous, half hidden in dirt by the side of the road. To the side of the piece, a burly, mean-looking man. The man put me in the mind of a lion. His beard billowed around his head, as bristly and as matted as the lion's mane. He took his large, iron-tipped boot and placed it, with a heavy clump, on top of the coin I needed for supper.

I supposed he merely had not seen it, and I went up to him and asked as sweetly as I could if he would be so kind as to give it back. The look he gave me was rough and angry, so I smiled my gap-toothed grin at him, poking my tongue in the places where my little teeth had fallen out.

This wore away some of his anger, if only for a minute. "What is your name?" He asked. I thought it not intentional, but his voice was very much the growl of an angry lion I had once seen confined to a cage at a fair. He wanted to escape from a horror personal to him.

Smiling again, I complied with his request. "Petit Gervais, monsieur."

All the hardness and coldness I had seen leave the man rushed back to him with full force, and he no longer seemed to yearn for that freedom.

"Get out," he growled again, once more mimicking a beast.

I needed that piece to eat. I did not care what he would do to me; I needed to get it back. "Monsieur," I whimpered. "Give me my coin."

The man looked down at his feet and was silent, as though he didn't understand. I saw him in now the deeper sorrow of a lion born in a cage. He knew of the jungle, but he would never get there.

My dalle tugged and rolled in my stomach, and I realized how dire my situation really was. "Do you see my piece of money?" The man looked blankly at his feet. "Give it to me, will you?"

The man was so fixed in his state of deformed serenity that he did not look up.

My dalle grew and grew, and I became desperate to get the sous back from under his paw. "Monsieur!" I shouted, close to tears. "Give me my white piece!"

He sat there still, remaining in the same strange state, dreaming of his jungle.

I had little sympathy for him, as I had not eaten in days. I needed that coin. I needed it to live.

Worried about what might happen if I went on my way with no white piece, I began to cry.

I needed to bring him back, to show him he was a man, not a lion. I wanted him to see that taking a poor boy's coin was not going to free him from his cage.

I took him by the frayed collar and shook him. With my other dirty little hand I tried move the heavy boot, but it was of no avail.

This jarred him slightly from his dreamlike state, and brought the man back to the path beside which he sat and upon which I shook hungrily. He seemed to have realized his life would be spent in that wrought iron cage, and it made him both troubled and wildly angry.

"Who is there?" bellowed the lion.

Who was there?! Hadn't I already told him who was there?! I wanted my piece, I wanted my life; I had no time for this!

"Me, Me!" I yelled frantically, letting go of his shirt. "Petit Gervais! I already said that, m'sieur!  Give me my piece! Move your foot!"

I had never been this desperate, or this angry, in all my short life. This was no win or lose children's game; this was a matter of life and death. Could he not see I depended upon those 40 sous?

"Take away your foot, old fool!" Why won't you take away you foot?!"

The man twitched. "Ah, you're still here!" He stood up, growling one last time. "You'd better take care of yourself!

This instilled in me the deepest, greatest fear, I was more afraid than I was desperate now. My bones shook under the bit of skin that covered them, and I was scared of what he would do. I heard tell in Savoy of little roaming boys who were killed on the roadside by robbers and villains. The little girls had more to worry about. I was scared stiff, as I said, and for a few seconds, my legs froze to the path and I remained stationary.

Finally, I forgot my fears, my piece, and my dalle and sped away as fast as I was able to.

I stopped a very long ways later, exhausted and unable to move a leg. I fell down in a thicket by the side of the path, with the dalle weighing me, pressing me into the dust from whence I came. I fell into a fitful sleep, struggling as the dalle slowly crushed me.

It is true, the children's stories. Get too close to a lion, and he shall eat you up.