"I looked out for work; but it was too late. I can sew very well, I have good courage, and thought that I had only to ask for work and get it. Ah! how I deceived myself! I went into a shop where they sell ready-made linen, and asked for employment, and as I would not tell a story, I said I had just left prison. They showed me the door, without making me any answer. I begged they would give me a trial, and they pushed me into the street as if I had been a thief. Then I remembered, too late, what Rigolette had told me. Little by little I sold my small stock of clothes and linen, and when all was gone they turned me out of my lodging. I had not tasted food for two days; I did not know where to sleep. At this moment I met the ogress and one of her old women who knew where I lodged, and was always coming about me since I left prison. They told me they would find me work, and I believed them. I went with them, so exhausted for want of food that my senses were gone. They gave me brandy to drink, and--and--here I am!" said the unhappy creature, hiding her face in her hands. "Have you lived a long time with the ogress, my poor girl?" asked Rodolph, in accents of the deepest compassion. "Six weeks, sir," replied Goualeuse, shuddering as she spoke. "I see,--I see," said the Chourineur; "I know you now as well as if I were your father and mother, and you had never left my lap. Well, well, this is a confession indeed!" "It makes you sad, my girl, to tell the story of your life," said Rodolph. "Alas! sir," replied Fleur-de-Marie, sorrowfully, "since I was born this is the first time it ever happened to me to recall all these things at once, and my tale is not a merry one." "Well," said the Chourineur, ironically, "you are sorry, perhaps, that you are not a kitchen-wench in a cook-shop, or a servant to some old brutes who think of no one but themselves." "Ah!" said Fleur-de-Marie, with a deep sigh, "to be quite happy, we must be quite virtuous." "Oh, what is your little head about now?" exclaimed the Chourineur, with a loud burst of laughter. "Why not count your rosary in honour of your father and mother, whom you never knew?" "My father and mother abandoned me in the street like a puppy that is one too many in the house; perhaps they had not enough to feed themselves," said Goualeuse, with bitterness. "I want nothing of them,--I complain of nothing,--but there are lots happier than mine." "Yours! Why, what would you have? You are as handsome as a Venus, and yet only sixteen and a half; you sing like a nightingale, behave yourself very prettily, are called Fleur-de-Marie, and yet you complain! What will you say, I should like to know, when you will have a stove under your 'paddlers,' and a chinchilla boa, like the ogress?" "Oh, I shall never be so old as she is." "Perhaps you have a charm for never growing any older?" "No; but I could not lead such a life. I have already a bad cough."