In exitu Israel

by S. Baring-Gould

'Most certainly.'

'And you think he really will be moved?'

'No doubt about it.'

There was something in Madeleine's manner which grated on the young Norman girl's feelings; she withdrew her hands from clasping that of the Parisian, and said reproachfully: 'You are mocking me.'

'No, I am not,' answered Madeleine, vehemently. 'Poor simple child! Do you not see what I mean? You are pretty, more than pretty, you are beautiful, and with all the freshness of the country about you. The amorous prince will be bewitched at once. He will grant you all you want, take your request to the queen, insist on her obtaining from the king a release for your imprisoned lady,—but, remember what I told you. No one at court does anything without expecting a return.'

She looked at Gabrielle, who shrank from her.

'Mind,' said the city flower-girl; 'I counsel nothing of the sort. I show you the only possible means of success which is open to you in that quarter. I know the court. The court has made us French poor. It eats the fruit of our labour, and it says, when asked any little favour, Give! but what shall we give? you have taken our means of subsistence and our liberties. And the court answers, you have sacrificed to us your lives and liberties, surrender also your honour.' The girl sprang from the bed, and whirling round the room, cried in a tone of mingled bitterness and banter: 'Did they in olden times pass their sons and their daughters through the fire to Moloch? Hah! Versailles, temple of Moloch, I salute you! Hah! royalty, Moloch of modern days, I prostrate myself before you. Sometimes I think I shall live to see that charnel-house swept out, and the great idol overthrown. The hope is too great, the prospect overwhelms me. Gabrielle! have you ever heard of a vampire? The vampire is a dead man, who leaves his grave to suck the blood of the living. Where there is a vampire, a blight falls on the neighbourhood; old and young waste away, their blood is drained off to nourish a corpse which it cannot vivify. If the coffin be examined, it is found to brim over with blood; the corpse floats in blood, and is itself bloated with blood—blood that it has drained from young veins and hopeful hearts, withering hopes and destroying youth. Gabrielle! monarchy is the vampire. It is a dead system of the past, to which nothing can restore life. In olden times it was a living, thinking, acting power; now it is a carcase, but not a harmless one. It drinks blood to this day—the blood of the poor. It feeds worms, too, the court sycophants.'

The girl paced up and down the room as she spoke; then stopped, burst into a laugh, and said: 'And what am I but a courtier of those bloodsuckers? What is my highest ambition but to draw off a little of the blood they drink, that I may riot in it myself? God have mercy on poor France! men cannot afford to be honest or women to be modest, when their honest means of subsistence is snatched from them by harpies to be flung broadcast among the profligate.'

Then, reseating herself, and drawing her hand across her brow, she said, sadly: 'Why cannot I live on the work of my hands? Because prejudice and law combine to shut me out from trades in which I could honestly earn my bread. And yet I have wished to live quietly and toil for my living; but the times are against me, because society is against me. Alas, Gabrielle! what do you think is the proudest hope of a Parisian girl? Why, to become a Du Barry or a Pompadour. A man strives and denies himself to become a great judge, or a great artist, or a great philosopher, but a girl's ambition is to be mistress to a prince, a duke, or a count. It is not our fault, it is the fault of a rotten society which overwhelms some men with wealth and reduces others to beggary, and says to those who are down, your only hope of rising is by vice, all honourable avenues are shut.'

Madeleine put her arm round the little peasant-girl, and added in a soft tone, 'Do not misunderstand me, my little simpleton. I am not so low as you seem to think—I have not fallen over the precipice, but my mother and the necessities of the time are forcing me nearer and nearer to it every day, and my heart recoils with fear and loathing.' She began to cry. 'Dear Gabrielle,' she continued; 'I think that perhaps with a new order of things we might look up to Heaven for help, instead of groping for crusts of bread among the ashes of hell. I do not know, but I think it might be so. Oh that a Revolution might come before the edge of the precipice is reached, and I am lost!'