"Come, come, godmother, you're not quite just," said Mariette, anxious to dispel Madame Lacombe's ill-humour. "To my certain knowledge, you have had at least one happy day in your life." "Which day, pray?" "The day when, at my mother's death, you took me into your home out of charity." "Well?" "Well, did not the knowledge that you had done such a noble deed please you? Wasn't that a happy day for you, godmother?" "You call that a happy day, do you? On the contrary it was one of the very worst days I ever experienced." "Why, godmother?" exclaimed the girl, reproachfully. "It was, for my good-for-nothing husband having died, as soon as his debts were paid I should have had nobody to think of but myself; but after I took you, it was exactly the same as if I were a widow with a child to support, and that is no very pleasant situation for a woman who finds it all she can do to support herself. But you were so cute and pretty with your curly head and big blue eyes, and you looked so pitiful kneeling beside your mother's coffin, that I hadn't the heart to let you go to the Foundling Asylum. What a night I spent asking myself what I should do about you, and what would become of you if I should get out of work. If I had been your own mother, Mariette, I couldn't have been more worried, and here you are talking about that having been a happy day for me. No; if I had been well off, it would have been very different! I should have said to myself: 'There is no danger, the child will be provided for.' But to take a child without any hope of bettering its condition is a very serious thing." "Poor godmother!" said the young girl, deeply affected. Then smiling through her tears in the hope of cheering the sick woman, she added: "Ah, well, we won't talk of days, then, but of moments, for I'm going to convince you that you have at least been happy for that brief space of time, as at this present moment, for instance." "This present moment?" "Yes, I'm sure you must be pleased to see that I have stopped crying, thanks to the kind things you have been saying to me." But the sick woman shook her head sadly. "When I get over a fit of ill-temper like that I had just now, do you know what I say to myself?" she asked. "What is it, godmother?" "I say to myself: 'Mariette is a good girl, I know, but I am always so disagreeable and unjust to her that way down in the depths of her heart she must hate me, and I deserve it.'" "Come, come, godmother, why will you persist in dwelling upon that unpleasant subject, godmother?" said the girl, reproachfully. "You must admit that I am right, and I do not say this in any faultfinding way, I assure you. It would be perfectly natural. You are obliged almost to kill yourself working for me, you nurse me and wait on me, and I repay you with abuse and hard words. My death will, indeed, be a happy release for you, poor child. The sooner the undertaker comes for me, the better."