This lightness of impression was so little affected by personal feeling, that, by a mode of extremely delicate reasoning, the grisette considered it almost a duty to aid those more unhappy than herself, that she might thus unscrupulously enjoy an existence so very precarious and entirely dependent on her labour, but which, compared with the fearful distress of the lapidary's family, appeared to her almost luxurious. "In order to sing without compunction, when we have near us persons so much to be pitied," she said, naively, "we must have been as charitable to them as possible." Before we inform our reader the cause of Rigolette's first sorrow, we are desirous to assure him, or her, completely as to the virtue of this young girl. We are sorry to use the word virtue,--a serious, pompous, solemn word, which almost always brings with it ideas of painful sacrifice, of painful struggle against the passions, of austere meditations on the final close of all things here below. Such was not the virtue of Rigolette. She had neither deeply struggled nor meditated; she had worked, and laughed, and sung. Her prudence, as she called it, when speaking frankly and sincerely to Rodolph, was with her a question of time,--she had not the leisure to be in love. Particularly lively, industrious, and orderly, order, work, and gaiety had often, unknown to herself, defended, sustained, saved her. It may be deemed, perchance, that this morality is light, frivolous, casual; but of what consequence is the cause, so that the effect endures? Of what consequence are the directions of the roots of a plant, provided the flower blooms pure, expanded, and full of perfume?