“Can you compare me with yourself?  Look,” said Mother Bunch, taking her sister by the hand, and leading her to a mirror placed above a couch, “look!—­Dost think that God made you so beautiful, endowed you with such quick and ardent blood, with so joyous, animated, grasping a nature and with such taste and fondness for pleasure, that your youth might be spent in a freezing garret, hid from the sun, nailed constantly to your chair, clad almost in rags, and working without rest and without hope?  No! for He has given us other wants than those of eating and drinking.  Even in our humble condition, does not beauty require some little ornament?  Does not youth require some movement, pleasure, gayety?  Do not all ages call for relaxation and rest?  Had you gained sufficient wages to satisfy hunger, to have a day or so’s amusement in the week, after working every other day for twelve or fifteen hours, and to procure the neat and modest dress which so charming a face might naturally claim—­you would never have asked for more, I am sure of it—­you have told me as much a hundred times.  You have yielded, therefore, to an irresistible necessity, because your wants are greater than mine.”

“It is true,” replied the Bacchanal Queen, with a pensive air; “if I could but have gained eighteenpence a day, my life would have been quite different; for, in the beginning, sister, I felt cruelly humiliated to live at a man’s expense.”

“Yes, yes—­it was inevitable, my dear Cephyse; I must pity, but cannot blame you.  You did not choose your destiny; but, like me, you have submitted to it.”

“Poor sister!” said Cephyse, embracing the speaker tenderly; “you can encourage and console me in the midst of your own misfortunes, when I ought to be pitying you.”

“Be satisfied!” said Mother Bunch; “God is just and good.  If He has denied me many advantages, He has given me my joys, as you have yours.”

“Joys?”

“Yes, and great ones—­without which life would be too burdensome, and I should not have the courage to go through with it.”

“I understand you,” said Cephyse, with emotion; “you still know how to devote yourself for others, and that lightens your own sorrows.”

“I do what I can, but, alas! it is very little; yet when I succeed,” added Mother Bunch, with a faint smile, “I am as proud and happy as a poor little ant, who, after a great deal of trouble, has brought a big straw to the common nest.  But do not let us talk any more of me.”

“Yes, but I must, even at the risk of making you angry,” resumed the Bacchanal Queen, timidly; “I have something to propose to you which you once before refused.  Jacques Rennepont has still, I think, some money left—­we are spending it in follies—­now and then giving a little to poor people we may happen to meet—­I beg of you, let me come to your assistance—­I see in your poor face, you cannot conceal it from me, that you are wearing yourself out with toil.”