val, Fleur-de-Marie had so nobly profited by the
example of her benefactors, so assimilated herself with their
principles, that, remembering her past degradation, she daily became
more hopeless of recovering the place she had lost in society. As her
mind expanded so did her fine and noble instincts arrive at mature
growth, and bring forth worthy fruits in the midst of the atmosphere of
honour and purity in which she lived. Had she possessed a less exalted
mind, a less exquisite sensibility, or an imagination of weaker quality,
Fleur-de-Marie might easily have been comforted and consoled; but,
unfortunately, not a single day passed in which she did not recall, and
almost live over again, with an agony of horror and disgust, the
disgraceful miseries of her past life. Let the reader figure to himself
a young creature of sixteen, candid and pure, and rejoicing in that very
candour and purity, thrown, by frightful circumstances, into the
infamous den of the ogress, and irrecoverably subjected to the dominion
of such a fiend,--such was the reaction of the past on the present on
Fleur-de-Marie's mind. Let us still further display the resentful
retrospect, or, rather, the moral agony with which the Goualeuse
suffered so excruciatingly, by saying that she regretted, more
frequently than she had courage to own to the cure, the not having
perished in the midst of the slough of wickedness by which she was
encompassed.

However little a person may reflect, or however limited his knowledge of
life may be, he will not refuse to assent to our remarks touching the
commiseration which such a case as Fleur-de-Marie's fully called for.
She was deserving of both interest and pity, not only because she had
never known what it was to have her affections fairly roused, but
because all her senses were torpid, and as yet unawakened by noble
impulses--untaught, unaided, unadvised. Is it not wonderful that this
unfortunate girl, thrown at the tender age of sixteen years in the midst
of the herd of savage and demoralised beings who infest the Cite, should
have viewed her degrading position with horror and disgust, and have
escaped from the sink of iniquity morally pure and free from sin?

CHAPTER X.

THE HOLLOW WAY.

The sun was descending, and the fields were silent and deserted.
Fleur-de-Marie had reached the entrance to the hollow way, which it was
necessary to cross in her walk to the rectory, when she saw a little
lame lad, dresse