“With a laugh t’other side of the mouth—­you would say; it is true, Mother Arsene.  But, you see, every one has not the courage to go into harness, in order to remain virtuous.  A body says to herself, you must have some amusement while you are young and pretty—­you will not always be seventeen years old—­and then—­and then—­the world will end, or you will get married.”

“But, perhaps, it would have been better to begin by that.”

“Yes, but one is too stupid; one does not know how to catch the men, or to frighten them.  One is simple, confiding, and they only laugh at us.  Why, Mother Arsene, I am myself an example that would make you shudder; but ’tis quite enough to have had one’s sorrows, without fretting one’s self at the remembrance.”

“What, my beauty! you, so young and gay, have had sorrows?”

“Ah, Mother Arsene!  I believe you.  At fifteen and a half I began to cry, and never left off till I was sixteen.  That was enough, I think.”

“They deceived you, mademoiselle?”

“They did worse.  They treated me as they have treated many a poor girl, who had no more wish to go wrong than I had.  My story is not a three volume one.  My father and mother are peasants near Saint-Valery, but so poor—­so poor, that having five children to provide for, they were obliged to send me, at eight years old, to my aunt, who was a charwoman here in Paris.  The good woman took me out of charity, and very kind it was of her, for I earned but little.  At eleven years of age she sent me to work in one of the factories of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.  I don’t wish to speak, ill of the masters of these factories; but what do they care, if little boys and girls are mixed up pell-mell with young men and women of eighteen to twenty?  Now you see, there, as everywhere, some are no better than they should be; they are not particular in word or deed, and I ask you, what art example for the children, who hear and see more than you think for.  Then, what happens?  They get accustomed as they grow older, to hear and see things, that afterwards will not shock them at all.”

“What you say there is true, Rose-Pompon.  Poor children! who takes any trouble about them?—­not their father or mother, for they are at their daily work.”

“Yes, yes, Mother Arsene, it is all very well; it is easy to cry down a young girl that has gone wrong; but if they knew all the ins and outs, they would perhaps pity rather than blame her.  To come back to myself—­at fifteen years old I was tolerably pretty.  One day I had something to ask of the head clerk.  I went to him in his private room.  He told me he would grant what I wanted, and even take me under his patronage, if I would listen to him; and he began by trying to kiss me.  I resisted.  Then he said to me:—­’You refuse my offer?  You shall have no more work; I discharge you from the factory.’”

“Oh, the wicked man!” said Mother Arsene.