l myself show you how to die."

"I count upon you, Jacques," answered Cephyse, embracing her lover
with excited feeling; then she added, sorrowfully: "It was a kind of
presentiment, when just now I felt so sad, without knowing why, in the
midst of all our gayety--and drank to the Cholera, so that we might die
together."

"Well! perhaps the Cholera will come," resumed Jacques, with a gloomy
air; "that would save us the charcoal, which we may not even be able to
buy."

"I can only tell you one thing, Jacques, that to live and die together,
you will always find me ready."

"Come, dry your eyes," said he, with profound emotion. "Do not let us
play the children before these men."

Some minutes after, the coach took the direction to Jacques's lodging,
where he was to change his clothes, before proceeding to the debtors'
prison.

Let us repeat, with regard to the hunchback's sister--for there are
things which cannot be too often repeated--that one of the most fatal
consequences of the Inorganization of Labor is the Insufficiency of
Wages.

The insufficiency of wages forces inevitably the greater number of
young girls, thus badly paid, to seek their means of subsistence in
connections which deprave them.

Sometimes they receive a small allowance from their lovers, which,
joined to the produce of their labor, enables them to live. Sometimes
like the sempstress's sister, they throw aside their work altogether,
and take up their abode with the man of their choice, should he be
able to support the expense. It is during this season of pleasure and
idleness that the incurable leprosy of sloth takes lasting possession of
these unfortunate creatures.

This is the first phase of degradation that the guilty carelessness of
Society imposes on an immense number of workwomen, born with instincts
of modesty, and honesty, and uprightness.

After a certain time they are deserted by their seducers--perhaps when
they are mothers. Or, it may be, that foolish extravagance consigns
the imprudent lover to prison, and the young girl finds herself alone,
abandoned, without the means of subsistence.

Those who have still preserved courage and energy go back to their
work--but the examples are very rare. The others, impelled by misery,
and by habits of indolence, fall into the lowest depths.

And yet we must pity, rather than blame them, for the first and virtual
cause of their fall has been the insufficient remuneration of labor and
su