"Furnished lodgings! Only consider, there are four, and for such a number we should have to pay at least twenty sous (ten pence) a day. What should we have to live upon if we paid all that for rent? And now we give but fifty francs a year for the rooms we occupy." "True, my girl," replied Pique-Vinaigre, with bitter irony. "That's right,--work, slave, begrudge yourself necessary rest or food, in order to refurnish your place. And directly you have once more got things comfortably about you, your husband will come and strip you of everything; and when he has deprived you almost of the garments you wear, he will take your dear Catherine from you and sell her also." "No, no, brother; he should take my life ere I would suffer him to injure my good, my virtuous child." "Oh, but he does not wish to do her any bodily harm; he only wants to sell her. And then, remember, as the lawyer said, he is master until you can find five hundred francs to be legally separated from him. So, as that is not the case, at present you must make up your mind to submit to what cannot be helped. It seems that, by law, your husband has a right to take his child from you and send her where he pleases. And if he and his mistress are bent upon the ruin of the poor girl, doubtless they will stop at nothing to achieve it." "Merciful God!" exclaimed the almost frantic mother, "surely such wickedness can never be tolerated in a Christian land! Justice itself would interpose if a father could insist upon selling his daughter's honour." "Justice!" repeated Pique-Vinaigre, with a sardonic laugh, "justice! No, no, that meat is too dear for poor folks like you and I. Only, do you see, if it refers to sending a parcel of poor wretches to prison or the galleys, then it is quite a different affair; and they have justice without its costing them anything,--nay, it becomes a matter of life and death. An unhappy criminal gets his head shaved off by the guillotine for nothing; not a single farthing are they or their friends, whether rich or poor, tailed upon to pay for this act of impartial justice. The object of it only gives his head! All other expenses are defrayed by a liberal and justice-loving legislature. But the justice that would protect a worthy and ill-treated mother of a family from being beaten and pillaged to support the vices of a man who seeks even to sell the honour of his innocent child,--such justice as that costs five hundred francs! So, my dear Jeanne, you must do without it." "Brother, brother," exclaimed the poor woman, bursting into tears, "you break my heart by such words as these!"