“They grew up quickly, these mining girls; and he remembered the ones back in Lille and how he used to wait for them behind the factories, whole gangs of them, already corrupted at the age of fourteen by living in the kind of destitution that makes people simply let themselves go.
From the age of ten La Moquette had been having sex in every corner of the ruins, not, like Lydie as a timid and unripe little urchin-child, but as a girl who had filled out and was ready for boys with beards.”
Émile Zola, “Germinal”, 1885.
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 