"Come now, Mamma Lacombe; to quiet your honest scruples, we shall say sixty francs per month for your pin money, and throw a superb shawl into the bargain. This will enable you to appear to advantage beside Mariette, whom you must watch with motherly solicitude, and never allow out of your sight, for I am jealous as a tiger, and don't like to be deceived."
"Only this very morning," put in the sick woman, "I was saying to Mariette, 'You are a respectable girl, and barely earn twenty sous per day sewing on chemises worth three hundred francs apiece, for a kept woman.'"
"Chemises worth three hundred francs apiece, ordered from Madame Jourdan? Let me see—ah! yes, I know. They must be for Amandine, the mistress of the Marquis de Saint-Herem, my most intimate friend—I recommended the establishment—a veritable fortune for Madame Jourdan, although that devil of a marquis seldom pays. But, on the other hand, all the furnishers and women he patronizes become the rage. Amandine was but an obscure little shop-girl six months ago, and now she is the most fashionable woman in Paris. And Mariette may have the same luck, you know. Fancy her wearing chemises worth three hundred francs apiece, instead of sewing them! Doesn't it make you feel like bursting with pride, Mamma Lacombe?"
"Unless Mariette ended like a girl of my acquaintance, who also sold herself through misery."
"What happened her?"
"She was robbed."
"Robbed?"
"She was promised mountains of gold, too; but at the end of three months she was deserted and left without a single sou. Then she killed herself in despair."
"The devil! what do you take me for?" cried the visitor, haughtily.
"Do I look like a swindler; a Robert Macaire?"
"I don't know what you are."