"Oh! don't pretend ignorance of the dirty things that go on every night in the dormitory! Do you dare to tell me, in my face, your eyes looking into mine, that you are ignorant of them? You encourage them because they are profitable to you,--yes, because they are profitable to you." And trembling, panting, with dry throat, I completed my accusation. "If religion is all that; if it is religious to keep a prison and a brothel,--well, then, I have enough of religion. My trunk, do you hear? I wish my trunk. You will give me my trunk at once." Sister Boniface was frightened. "I do not wish to discuss with a lost creature," said she, in a voice of dignity. "All right; you shall go." "With my trunk?" "With your trunk." "Very well; but it takes tall talk to get one's rights here. It is worse than at the custom-house." I went, in fact, that very evening. Cléclé, who was very nice, and who had saved something, lent me twenty francs. I went to engage a room in a lodging-house in the Rue de la Sourdière, and I bought a seat among the gallery-gods at the Porte-Saint-Martin. The play was "The Two Orphans." How true it is! Almost my own story. I passed there a delightful evening, weeping, weeping, weeping. XIV _November 18._ Rose is dead. Decidedly, misfortune hangs over the captain's house. Poor captain! His ferret dead ... Bourbaki dead ... and now it is Rose's turn! After a sickness of some days, she was carried off day before yesterday, in the evening, by a sudden attack of congestion of the lungs. She was buried this morning. From the windows of the linen-room I saw the procession pass in the road. The heavy coffin, borne by six men, was covered with crowns and with bunches of white flowers, like that of a young virgin. A considerable crowd, in long, dark, babbling files,--all Mesnil-Roy--followed Captain Mauger, who, wearing a tightly-fitting black frock-coat, and holding himself very stiffly, led the mourners, in thoroughly military fashion. And the church bells, tolling in the distance, responded to the sound of the rattle waved by the beadle. Madame had warned me that I was not to go to the funeral. However, I had no desire to go. I did not like this fat and wicked woman; her death leaves me very calm and indifferent. Yet perhaps I shall miss Rose; perhaps I shall miss my occasional conversations with her in the road. But what a source of gossip this event must be at the grocer's!