"To increase the value of the gift, I confess I did presume to name you as their benefactress. Besides, what have I done more than carry out your promises?" "I cannot allow of even this pious fraud, and to-morrow they shall learn from me whom they have to thank. I will tell them the extent of their obligations to you." "Oh, pray do no such thing, or you will spoil all my fine schemes. Remember that I have a small apartment in the house; that for the sake of much good I hope to effect, I am anxious to preserve a strict _incognito_ there. Recollect, also, that the Morels are now beyond the reach of further distress; and, finally, let me remind you that there are other claimants for your benevolence. And now for the subject of our present intrigue. I want your generous aid and assistance in behalf of a mother and daughter, who from former affluence are at this moment reduced to the most abject penury, in consequence of having been most villainously despoiled of their just rights." "Poor things! And where do these unfortunate beings reside, my lord?" "I do not know." "Then how did you become acquainted with their misfortunes?" "Yesterday I was at the Temple,--perhaps, Madame la Marquise, you do not know what sort of place the Temple is?" "Indeed, my lord, I do not." "It is a bazaar of the most amusing description. Well, I went there for the purpose of making several purchases in company with a female lodger who occupies an apartment adjoining my own--" "Indeed! A female neighbour?" "Yes, my next-door neighbour on the fourth floor. Don't you recollect I told you I had a chamber in the Rue du Temple?" "Pardon me, my lord, I had quite forgotten that circumstance." "I must tell you that this same neighbour is one of the prettiest little mantua-makers you ever saw. She is called Rigolette, is for ever laughing, and never was in love." "Upon my word, a most uncommon specimen of her class!" "She even admits that her indifference to the tender passion arises less from prudence than because she has not time to think about love or lovers, both of which she says would take up too much of her time; as, working from twelve to fifteen hours daily, it is with difficulty she manages to earn twenty-five sous a day, yet on that trifling sum she lives contentedly." "Is it possible?" "Possible! Why, she even launches out into luxuries,--has a couple of birds, who consume as much food as herself, arranges her chamber with the most scrupulous and pretty neatness, while her dress would make a modern belle grow pale with envy." "And all this effected upon five and twenty sous a day? It is almost difficult to believe it."