I found myself in a carriage with two middle-aged women belonging to the domestic and retired class of Parisians I have spoken of above.  A few civilities were sufficient to gain me their confidence, and after some minutes I was acquainted with their whole history.

They were two poor sisters, left orphans at fifteen, and had lived ever since, as those who work for their livelihood must live, by economy and privation.  For the last twenty or thirty years they had worked in jewelry in the same house; they had seen ten masters succeed one another, and make their fortunes in it, without any change in their own lot.  They had always lived in the same room, at the end of one of the passages in the Rue St. Denis, where the air and the sun are unknown.  They began their work before daylight, went on with it till after nightfall, and saw year succeed to year without their lives being marked by any other events than the Sunday service, a walk, or an illness.

The younger of these worthy work-women was forty, and obeyed her sister as she did when a child.  The elder looked after her, took care of her, and scolded her with a mother’s tenderness.  At first it was amusing; afterward one could not help seeing something affecting in these two gray-haired children, one unable to leave off the habit of obeying, the other that of protecting.

And it was not in that alone that my two companions seemed younger than their years; they knew so little that their wonder never ceased.  We had hardly arrived at Clamart before they involuntarily exclaimed, like the king in the children’s game, that they “did not think the world was so great”!

It was the first time they had trusted themselves on a railroad, and it was amusing to see their sudden shocks, their alarms, and their courageous determinations:  everything was a marvel to them!  They had remains of youth within them, which made them sensible to things which usually only strike us in childhood.  Poor creatures! they had still the feelings of another age, though they had lost its charms.

But was there not something holy in this simplicity, which had been preserved to them by abstinence from all the joys of life?  Ah! accursed be he who first had the had courage to attach ridicule to that name of “old maid,” which recalls so many images of grievous deception, of dreariness, and of abandonment!  Accursed be he who can find a subject for sarcasm in involuntary misfortune, and who can crown gray hairs with thorns!

The two sisters were called Frances and Madeleine.  This day’s journey was a feat of courage without example in their lives.  The fever of the times had infected them unawares.  Yesterday Madeleine had suddenly proposed the idea of the expedition, and Frances had accepted it immediately.  Perhaps it would have been better not to yield to the great temptation offered by her younger sister; but “we have our follies at all ages,” as the prudent Frances philosophically remarked.  As for Madeleine, there are no regrets or doubts for her; she is the life-guardsman of the establishment.