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