"Well, child, be good—laugh at your troubles—be good," said the Chourineur.
"Good! mon Dieu! and how do you mean be good? The clothes I wear belong to the ogress, and I am in debt to her for my board and lodging. I can't stir from her; she would have me taken up as a thief. I belong to her, and I must pay her."
When she had uttered these last words, the unhappy girl could not help shuddering, and a tear trembled in her long eyelashes.
"Well, but remain as you are, and do not compare yourself to a country milkwoman," said the Chourineur. "Are you taking leave of your senses? Only think, you may yet cut a figure in the capital, whilst the milkwoman must boil the pot for her brats, milk her cows, gather grass for her rabbits, and, perhaps, after all, get a black eye from her husband when he comes home from the pot-house. Why, it is really ridiculous to hear you talk of envying her."
The Goualeuse did not reply; her eye was fixed, her heart was full, and the expression of her face was painfully distressed. Rodolph had listened to the recital, made with so painful a frankness, with deep interest. Misery, destitution, ignorance of the world, had weighed down this wretched girl, cast at sixteen years of age on the wide world of Paris!
Rodolph involuntarily thought of a beloved child whom he had lost,—a girl, dead at six years of age, and who, had she survived, would have been, like Fleur-de-Marie, sixteen years and a half old. This recollection excited the more highly his solicitude for the unhappy creature whose narration he had just heard.