Then suddenly checking herself, La Louve pulled up the sleeve of her gown, and showing La Goualeuse her white arm, powerful, and covered with black down, she showed her, on the upper part of it, an indelible tattooing, representing a blue dagger half plunged in a red heart; over this emblem were these words: MORT AUX LACHES! MARTIAL P. L. V. (_pour la vie_.) (DEATH TO COWARDS! MARTIAL FOR LIFE!) "Do you see that?" asked La Louve. "Yes; and it is so shocking, it quite frightens me," said La Goualeuse, turning away her head. "When Martial, my lover, wrote, with a red-hot needle, these words on my arm, 'Death to Cowards!' he thought me brave; if he knew my behaviour for the last three days, he would stick his knife in my body, as this dagger is driven into this heart,--and he would be right, for he wrote here, 'Death to Cowards!' and I am a coward." "What have you done that is cowardly?" "Everything." "Do you regret the good resolution you made just now?" "Yes." "I cannot believe you." "I say I do regret it,--for it is another proof of what you can do with all of us. Didn't you understand what Mont Saint-Jean meant when she went on her knees to thank you?" "What did she say?" "She said, speaking of you, that with nothing you turned us from evil to good. I could have throttled her when she said it, for, to our shame, it was true. Yes, in no time you change us from black to white. We listen to you,--give way to our first feelings, and are your dupes, as we were just now." "My dupe! for having generously succoured this poor woman?" "Oh, it has nothing to do with all that," exclaimed La Louve, with rage. "I have never till now stooped my head before a breathing soul. La Louve is my name, and I am well named: more than one woman bears my marks, and more than one man, too; and it shall never be said that a little chit like you can place me beneath her feet." "Me! and in what way?" "How do I know! You come here, and first begin by insulting me." "Insult you?" "Yes,--you ask who'll have your bread. I first say--_I._ Mont Saint-Jean did not ask for it till afterwards, and yet you give her the preference. Enraged at that, I rushed at you with my uplifted knife--" "And I said to you, 'Kill me, if you like, but do not let me linger long,' and that is all." "That is all? Yes, that is all. And yet these words made me drop my knife,--made me--ask your pardon,--yes, pardon of you who insulted me. Is that natural? Why, when I recovered my senses, I was ashamed of myself. The evening you came here, when you were on your knees to say your prayers,--why, instead of making game of you, and setting all the dormitory on you, did I say, 'Let her alone; she prays, and has a right to pray?' Then the next day, why were I and all the others ashamed to dress ourselves before you?" "I do not know, La Louve."