"All the merry, laughing girls I saw at this little entertainment, girls who are, like Herminie, dependent entirely upon their own exertions for a livelihood, may know all the horrors of abject want to-morrow, if work should fail them! "Is there no one to whom they can go and say, 'I am brave and willing, only give me work?' "But such a state of things is unjust! It is shameful! Is there no such thing as pity for the woes of others in the world? Is it a matter of little or no consequence that there should be so many people in the world who do not know whether they will have food on the morrow? "Oh, mother, mother, now I understand the vague fear and uneasiness I experienced when they told me I was so rich! I had good reason to say to myself, with something akin to remorse: "Such vast wealth for myself alone? And why? "Why should I have so much and others nothing? "How did I acquire this immense fortune? "Alas! I acquired it only by your death, my mother, and by your death, my father. "So I had to lose those I held most dear in the world in, order to become so rich. "In order that I may be so rich, it is necessary, perhaps, that thousands of young girls like Herminie should be always in danger of want,--happy to-day, filled with despair to-morrow. "And when they have lost their only treasures, the lightheartedness and gaiety of youth, when they are old, and when not only work, but strength is lacking, what becomes of these unfortunates? "Oh, mother, the more I think of the terrible difference between my lot and that of Herminie and so many other young girls--the more I think of the dangers that surround me, of all the nefarious schemes of which I am the object because I am rich, it seems to me that wealth imparts a strange bitterness to the heart. "Now my reason has at last asserted itself, I must satisfy myself of the omnipotent power of wealth over venal souls; I must see to what depths of degradation I, a girl of sixteen, can make those around me stoop. Yes, for my eyes are open now. I realise with profound gratitude that M. de Maillefort's revelations alone started this train of thought that is making everything more and more clear to me every minute. "I do not know, but it seems to me, my dear mother, that I can express my thoughts more clearly now, that my mind is developing, that my faculties are awakening from a sort of stupor, that my character is undergoing a decided change in many respects, and that, while it remains keenly susceptible to all that is sincere and generous, it is becoming strongly antagonistic and aggressive to all that is false, base and mercenary. "I am convinced of one thing: they lied to me when they told me that M. de Maillefort was your enemy. They told me so merely because they wanted to make me distrust his counsels. It was designedly that they fostered my dislike of him, a dislike caused by the slanders of which I have been the dupe.