"I have no right to your confidence, my poor child; I wish to ask you no improper questions; only I am assured, that if I ask your release from prison it will be granted. Before I ask, I wish to talk with you of your projects and resources for the future. Once free, what will you do? If, as I doubt not, you are decided to follow in the good path you have entered, have confidence in me--I will put you in a way to gain your living honorably." La Goualeuse was affected to tears at the interest Madame d'Harville evinced for her. She said, after a moment's thought, "You deign, madame, to show yourself so benevolent and generous, that I ought, perhaps, to break the silence which I have hitherto preserved as to the past. An oath compelled me." "An oath?" "Yes, madame; I have sworn to conceal from justice, and from the persons employed in this prison, in what manner I have been brought here; yet, if you will, madame, make me a promise--" "What promise?" "To keep my secret. I can, thanks to you, madame, without breaking my oath, relieve some respectable people, who, doubtless, are very uneasy about me." "Count on my discretion; I will only tell what you authorize me to say." "Oh, thank you, madame! I feared so much that my silence toward my benefactors would look like ingratitude." The sweet tears of Fleur-de-Marie, her language, so well chosen, struck Madame d'Harville with renewed astonishment. "I cannot conceal from you," said she, "that your bearing, your words, all astonish me much. How, with an education such as you appear to have had, how could you---" "Fall so low, madame?" said the Goualeuse, bitterly. "Yes, alas!" "It is but a short time since I received it. I owe it to a generous protector, who, like you, madame, without knowing me, without ever having the favorable accounts which they have given you here of me, took compassion on me." "And who is this protector?" "I am ignorant, madame." "You are ignorant?" "He has only made himself known to me by his inexhaustible goodness. Thanks to heaven! I found myself in his way." "Where did you meet him?" "One night, in the city, madame," said La Goualeuse, casting down her eyes, "a man wanted to strike me; this unknown benefactor courageously defended me. Such was my first encounter with him." "He was, then, a man of the common order?" "The first time I saw him he had their dress and language, but afterward--" "Afterward?" "The manner in which he spoke to me, the profound respect shown him by the people to whom he confided me, all proved to me that he had disguised himself as one of the men who frequent the city." "But for what purpose?" "I do not know." "And the name of this mysterious protector, do you know it?" "Oh, yes, madame, thank heaven!" said Goualeuse, with warmth; "for I can bless and adore without ceasing this name. My deliverer is known as Rudolph, madame." Clemence blushed deeply. "And has he no other name?" asked she, quickly, of Fleur-de-Marie.