"What is the use of preferring it, since it is not destined for me? What is the use of regretting that I walk the streets, since I shall die in the streets?" exclaimed La Louve, more and more irritated, and taking in her powerful grasp the small hand of Fleur-de-Marie. "Answer--answer! Why do you try to make me desire that which I cannot have." "To desire an honest and industrious life is to be worthy of that life, as I have already told you," replied Fleur-de-Marie, without attempting to disengage her hand. "Well, and what then? Suppose I am worthy, what does that prove? How much the better off will that make me?" "To see realised what you consider as a dream," answered Fleur-de-Marie, in a tone so serious and full of conviction that La Louve, again under control, let go La Goualeuse's hand, and gazed at her in amazement. "Listen to me, La Louve," said Fleur-de-Marie, in a voice full of feeling; "do you think me so wicked as to excite such ideas and hopes in you, if I were not sure that, whilst I made you blush at your present condition, I gave you the means to quit it?" "You! You can do this?" "I! No; but some one who is good, and great, and powerful." "Great and powerful?" "Listen, La Louve. Three months ago I was, like you, a lost, an abandoned creature. One day he of whom I speak to you with tears of gratitude,"--and Fleur-de-Marie wiped her eyes,--"one day he came to me, and he was not afraid, abased and despised as I was, to say comforting words to me, the first I had ever heard. I told him my sufferings, my miseries, my shame; I concealed nothing from him, just as you have related to me all your past life, La Louve. After having listened to me with kindness, he did not blame, but pitied me; he did not even reproach me with my disgraceful position, but talked to me of the calm and pure life which was found in the country." "As you did just now?" "Then my situation appeared to me the more frightful, in proportion as the future he held out to me seemed more beautiful." "Like me?" "Yes, and so I said as you did,--What use, alas! is it to make me fancy this paradise,--me, who am chained to hell? But I was wrong to despair; for he of whom I speak is so good, so just, that he is incapable of making a false hope shine in the eyes of a poor creature who asked no one for pity, happiness, or hope." "And what did he do for you?"