discovered.' 'No, she will go to prison willingly,' answered the Schoolmaster; 'and she shall take an oath not to give any information against any person as long as she is in St. Lazare, nor afterwards, either. This is a debt she owes me, for I prevented you from disfiguring her, La Chouette, and saved her from being drowned at Bras Rouge's; but if, after having sworn not to speak, she dares to do so, we will attack the farm at Bouqueval with fire and blood!' Then, addressing me, the Schoolmaster added,'Decide, then: take the oath I demand of you, and you shall get off for three months in prison; if not, I abandon you to La Chouette, who will take you to Bras Rouge's, where you will be drowned, and we will set Bouqueval farm on fire. So, come, decide. I know, if you take the oath, you will keep it.'" "And you did swear?" "Alas, yes, madame! I was so fearful they would do my protectors at the farm an injury, and then I so much dreaded being drowned by La Chouette in a cellar, it seemed so frightful to me; another death would have seemed to me less horrid, and, perhaps, I should not have tried to escape it." "What a dreadful idea at your age!" said Madame d'Harville, looking at La Goualeuse with surprise. "When you have left this place, and have been restored to your benefactors, shall you not be very happy? Has not your repentance effaced the past?" "Can the past ever be effaced? Can the past ever be forgotten? Can repentance kill memory, madame?" exclaimed Fleur-de-Marie, in a tone so despairing that Clemence shuddered. "But all faults are retrieved, unhappy girl!" "And the remembrance of stain, madame, does not that become more and more terrible in proportion as the soul becomes purer, in proportion as the mind becomes more elevated? Alas, the higher we ascend, the deeper appears the abyss which we have quitted!" "Then you renounce all hope of restoration--of pardon?" "On the part of others--no, madame, your kindness proves to me that remorse will find indulgence." "But you will be pitiless towards yourself?" "Others, madame, may not know, pardon, or forget what I have been, but I shall never forget it!" "And do you sometimes desire to die?" "Sometimes!" said Goualeuse, smiling bitterly. Then, after a moment's silence, she added, "Sometimes,--yes, madame." "Still you were afraid of being disfigured by that horrid woman; and so you wish to preserve your beauty, my poor little girl. That proves that life has still some attraction for you; so courage! Courage!" "It is, perhaps, weakness to think of it, but if I were handsome, as you say, madame, I should like to die handsome, pronouncing the name of my benefactor."