prison, I should like to enjoy myself a bit—that won't hurt anybody; work will come when the money is spent.' And so I began to spend my two hundred francs. Ah, that was my mistake," added Fleur-de-Marie, with a sigh. "I ought first to have got my work; but I hadn't a soul on earth to advise me. At sixteen, to be thrown on the city of Paris, as I was, one is so lonely; and what is done is done. I have done wrong, and I have suffered for it. I began then to spend my money: first, I bought flowers to put in my room—I do love flowers!—then I bought a gown, a nice shawl, and I took a walk in the Bois de Boulogne, and I went to St. Germains, Vincennes, and other country places. Oh, how I love the country!"
"With a lover by your side, my girl?" asked the Chourineur.
"Oh, mon Dieu! no! I like to be my own mistress. I had my little excursions with a friend who was in prison with me—a good little girl as can be: they call her Rigolette, because she is always laughing."
"Rigolette! Rigolette! I don't know her," said the Chourineur, who appeared to be appealing to his memory.
"I didn't think you knew her. I am sure Rigolette was very well behaved in prison, and always so gay and so industrious, she took out with her when she left the prison at least four hundred francs that she had earned. And then she is so particular!—you should see her! When I say I had no one to advise me, I am wrong: I ought to have listened to her; for, after having had a week's amusement together, she said to me, 'Now we have had such a holiday, we ought to try for work, and not spend our money in waste.' I, who was so happy in the fields and the woods—it was just at the end of spring, this year—I answered, 'Oh, I must be idle a little longer, and then I will work hard.' Since that time I have not seen Rigolette, but I heard a few days since that she was living near the Temple—that she was a famous needlewoman, and earned at least twenty-five sous a-day, and has a small workroom of her own; but now I could not for the world see her again—I should die with shame if I met her."
"So, then, my poor girl," said Rodolph, "you spent your money in the country—you like the country, do you?"
"Like it? I love it! Oh, what would I not give to live there? Rigolette, on the contrary, prefers Paris, and likes to walk on the Boulevards; but she is so nice and so kind, she went into the country only to please me."
"And you did not even leave yourself a few sous to live upon whilst you found work?" said the Chourineur.
"Yes, I had reserved about fifty francs; but it happened that I had for my washerwoman a woman called Lorraine, a poor thing, with none but the good God to protect her. She was then very near her confinement, and yet was obliged all day long to be with her hands and feet in her washing-tubs. She fell sick, and, not being able to work, applied for admittance to a lying-in hospital, but there was no room. She could not work, and her time was very near at hand, and she had not a son to pay for the bed in a garret, from which they drove her. Fortunately, she met one day, at the end of the Pont Notre-Dame, with Goubin's wife, who had been hiding for four days in a cellar of a house which was being pulled down behind the Hôtel Dieu—"
"But why was Goubin's wife hiding?"
"To escape from her husband, who threatened to kill her; and she only went out at night to buy some bread, and it was then she met with the poor Lorraine, ill, and hardly able to drag herself along, for she was expecting to be brought to bed every hour. Well, it seems this Goubin's wife took her to the cellar where she was hiding—it was just a shelter, and no more. There she shared her bread and straw with the poor Lorraine, who was confined in this cellar of a poor little infant; her only covering and bed was straw! Well, it seems that Goubin's wife could not bear it, and so, going out at all risks, even of being killed by her husband, who was looking for her everywhere, she left the cellar in open day, and came to me. She knew I had still a little money left, and that I could assist her if I would; so, when Helmina had told me all about poor Lorraine, who was obliged to lie with her new-born babe on straw, I told her to bring them both to my room at once, and I would take a chamber for her next to mine. This I did; and, oh, how happy she was, poor Lorraine, when she found herself in a bed, with her babe beside her in a little couch which I had bought for her! Helmina and I nursed her until she was able to get about again, and then, with the rest of my money, I enabled her to return to her washing-tubs."
"And when all your money was spent on Lorraine and her infant, what did you do, my child?" inquired Rodolph.
"I looked out for work; but it was too late. I can sew very well, I have good courage, and thought that I had only to ask for work and get it. Ah! how I deceived myself! I went into a shop where they sell ready-made linen, and asked for employment, and as I would not tell a story, I said I had just left prison. They showed me the door, without making me any answer. I begged they would give me a trial, and they pushed me into the street as if I had been a thief. Then I remembered, too late, what Rigolette had told me. Little by little I sold my small stock of clothes and linen, and when all was gone they turned me out of my lodging. I had not tasted food for two days; I did not know where to sleep. At this moment I met the ogress and one of her old women who knew where I lodged, and was always coming about me since I left prison. They told me they would find me work, and I believed them. I went with them, so exhausted for want of food that my senses were gone. They gave me brandy to drink, and—and—here I am!" said the unhappy creature, hiding her face in her hands.
"Have you lived a long time with the ogress, my poor girl?" asked Rodolph, in accents of the deepest compassion.
"Six weeks, sir," replied Goualeuse, shuddering as she spoke.
"I see—I see," said the Chourineur; "I know you now as well as if I were your father and mother, and you had never left my lap. Well, well, this is a confession indeed!"
"It makes you sad, my girl, to tell the story of your life," said Rodolph.
"Alas! sir," replied Fleur-de-Marie, sorrowfully, "since I was born this is the first time it ever happened to me to recall all these things at once, and my tale is not a merry one."
"Well," said the Chourineur, ironically, "you are sorry, perhaps, that you are not a kitchen-wench in a cook-shop, or a servant to some old brutes who think of no one but themselves."
"Ah!" said Fleur-de-Marie, with a deep sigh, "to be quite happy, we must be quite virtuous."
"Oh, what is your little head about now?" exclaimed the Chourineur, with a loud burst of laughter. "Why not count your rosary in honour of your father and mother, whom you never knew?"
"My father and mother abandoned me in the street like a puppy that is one too many in the house; perhaps they had not enough to feed themselves," said Goualeuse, with bitterness. "I want nothing of them—I complain of nothing—but there are lots happier than mine."
"Yours! Why, what would you have? You are as handsome as a Venus, and yet only sixteen and a half; you sing like a nightingale, behave yourself very prettily, are called Fleur-de-Marie, and yet you complain! What will you say, I should like to know, when you will have a stove under your 'paddlers,' and a chinchilla boa, like the ogress?"
"Oh, I shall never be so old as she is."
"Perhaps you have a charm for never growing any older?"
"No; but I could not lead such a life. I have already a bad cough."
"Ah, I see you already in the 'cold-meat box.' Go along, you silly child, you!"
"Do you often have such thoughts as these, Goualeuse?" said Rodolph.
"Sometimes. You, perhaps, M. Rodolph, understand me. In the morning, when I go to buy my milk from the milkwoman at the corner of Rue de la Vieille-Draperie,
