“Oh, sister! do not say that.”

“In simple truth,” returned Mother Bunch, “to what temptations is a creature like me exposed?  Do I not naturally seek solitude, even as you seek a noisy life of pleasure?  What wants have I?  A very little suffices.”

“But you have not always that little?”

“No—­but, weak and sickly as I seem, I can endure some privations better than you could.  Thus hunger produces in me a sort of numbness, which leaves me very feeble—­but for you, robust and full of life, hunger is fury, is madness.  Alas! you must remember how many times I have seen you suffering from those painful attacks, when work failed us in our wretched garret, and we could not even earn our four francs a week—­so that we had nothing—­absolutely nothing to eat—­for our pride prevented us from applying to the neighbors.”

“You have preserved the right to that honest pride.”

“And you as well!  Did you not struggle as much as a human creature could?  But strength fails at last—­I know you well, Cephyse—­it was hunger that conquered you; and the painful necessity of constant labor, which was yet insufficient to supply our common wants.”

“But you could endure those privations—­you endure them still.”

“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.”