“Alas!” I replied without obeying her request to go upstairs, for I feared the mother’s grief too much, “I know nothing more than you do, and the proof of that is that I came to inquire after Mademoiselle Favier, who appeared to me to be unwell last evening.” “She is not at your rooms, is she?” the woman asked struck by my embarrassment. Her suspicion revealed to me what passionate affection she bore the little one, as she called Camille. The mother’s despair and the servant’s distraction completed the breaking of my heart. Once more I realized in what an atmosphere of naïve and simple tenderness the poor Blue Duchess had grown up. She had been one of those little girls whose coming into the world is treated as a festival, and the steps towards their womanhood are festivals too: baptism, birthdays, her first sacrament, and her first long dress—and all that for the object of so much moving solicitude to end in the defilement of gallantry! The faithful servant continued like a naïve echo of my own bitter thoughts: “No, she cannot be with you or M. Molan, nor with M. Fomberteau; you are all of you too good fellows to turn a girl like her into a kept woman. She will be that now, Camille, Camille, Camille!” Forgetting her own precautions to prevent the gossip of the porter, the good woman began to sob. I calmed her to the best of my ability by swearing to her that I would make every effort to see Camille during the day and to tell her the state into which her mother had been thrown by her departure. “Make her come back!” was the only answer I obtained through her tears coupled with this sublime expression of shameless devotion: “If she wants to have adventures I will help her as much as she likes. Tell her so, only let her remain and live with us!”