"Poor woman! People talk of martyrs, but what martyrdom can exceed what you have endured?"
"And yet I can truly say I never injured a living creature, and my only desire was to work hard and do my duty to my husband and children. But it is no use thinking about it; there are fortunate and unfortunate persons, just the same as there are good people and bad people in the world!"
"True; and it is a beautiful sight to see how happy and prosperous the good always are,—aren't they, sister? And do you now believe yourself for ever freed from your scoundrel of a husband?"
"I trust so. He staid till he had sold even my bedstead and the cradle in which my youngest child lay. But when I think that, even more than that, he wished—"
"What did he wish?"
"When I say he, I ought rather to tell you that it was rather that wicked woman who urged him on. One day he said to me, 'I tell you what, when folks have a pretty girl of fifteen belonging to them, they are cursed fools if they do not turn her to good account.'"
"Oh, to be sure! When he had sold the poor girl's clothes, he was willing to sell her also."
"When I heard him say those dreadful words I lost all command over myself, and, I promise you, I did not spare him all the reproaches he merited. And when his vile paramour took upon herself to interfere, and say that my husband had a right to do what he liked with his own child, I could contain myself no longer; but I fell with all my fury on the wretched creature. This obtained for me a severe beating from my husband, who then left me; and I have never seen him since."
"I tell you, Jeanne, that there are men condemned to ten years' punishment and imprisonment who have not done so much to deserve it as your husband has done."
"Still he had not a bad heart. It was his frequenting alehouses, and the bad companions he met there who made him the lost creature he is."