We shall not proceed to any details connected with this new avocation to which that lovely maiden lent herself. Suffice it to say, that having sold her countenance to the statuary, her likeness to the artist, and her bust to the sculptor, she disposed of her whole body to the photographer. Thus her head embellished images white and bronzed; her features and her figure were perpetuated in divers paintings; her bust was immortalized in a splendid statue; and her entire form is preserved, in all attitudes, and on many plates, in the private cabinet of a photographer at one of the metropolitan Galleries of Practical Science.
At length the photographer was satisfied with the results of his experiments regarding the action of light upon every part of the human frame; and Ellen's occupation was again gone.
A tainted soul now resided in a pure body. Every remaining sentiment of decency and delicacy was crushed—obliterated—destroyed by this last service. Pure souls have frequently resided in tainted bodies: witness Lucretia after the outrage perpetrated upon her:—but here was essentially a foul soul in a chaste and virgin form.
And what dread cause had consummated this sad result? Not the will of the poor girl; for when we first saw her in her cold and cheerless chamber, her mind was spotless at the Alpine snow. But dire necessity—that necessity which became an instrument in the old hag's hands to model the young maiden to her purposes. For it was with ulterior views that the designing harridan had introduced the poor girl to that career which, without being actually criminal, led step by step towards criminality. The wretch knew the world well, and was enabled to calculate the influence of exterior circumstances upon the mind and the passions. After the first conversation which she had with Ellen, she perceived that the purity of the virgin was not to be undermined by specious representations, nor by dazzling theories, nor by delusive sophistry: and the hag accordingly placed the confiding girl upon a path which, while it supplied her with the necessaries of life, gradually presented to her mind scenes which were calculated to destroy her purity of thought and chastity of feeling for ever!
When Ellen left the service of the photographer, she repaired for the fifth time to the dwelling of the hag.
The old woman was seated as usual at her work; and she was humming to herself an opera air, which she remembered to have heard many—many years back.
"The Frenchman requires my services no longer," said Ellen. "What next can you do for me?"
"Alas! my poor child," answered the old woman, "the times were never so bad as they are at present! What is to become of us? what is to become of us?"
And the hag rocked herself backwards and forwards in her chair, as if overcome by painful reflections.
"You can, then, do nothing for me?" observed Ellen, interrogatively. "That is a pity! for I have not a shilling left in the world. We have lived up to the income which my occupations produced. My poor old father fancies up to the present moment that I have been working at dress-making and embroidery at the houses of great families; and he will wonder how all my engagements should so suddenly cease. Think, mother: are you not acquainted with another artist or sculptor?"