I feel it with rapture! His breath, alone, animates and
fertilises the new existence which he has given me in directing me to
console those who suffer. I experience an unalloyed delight in acting
but as he directs, in having no ideas but his; for I love him,--ah, yes,
I love him! And yet he shall always be in ignorance of this, the
lasting passion of my life."

* * * * *

Whilst Madame d'Harville is waiting for La Goualeuse, we will conduct
the reader into the presence of the prisoners.

CHAPTER X.

MONT SAINT-JEAN.

It was just two o'clock by the dial of the prison of St. Lazare. The
cold, which had lasted for several days, had been succeeded by soft,
mild, and almost spring weather; the rays of the sun were reflected in
the water of the large square basin, with its stone corners, formed in
the centre of a courtyard planted with trees, and surrounded by dark,
high walls pierced with a great many iron-barred windows. Wooden benches
were fastened here and there in this large paved enclosure, which served
for the walking-place of the prisoners. The ringing of a bell announcing
the hour of recreation, the prisoners came in throngs by a thick
wicket-door which was opened to them. These women, all clad alike, wore
black skull-caps and long loose gowns of blue woollen cloth, fastened
around the waist by a band and iron buckle. There were there two hundred
prostitutes, sentenced for breach of the particular laws which control
them and place them out of the pale of the common law. At first sight
their appearance had nothing striking, but, after regarding them with
further attention, there might be detected in each face the almost
ineffaceable stigmas of vice, and particularly that brutishness which
ignorance and misery invariably engender. Whilst contemplating these
masses of lost creatures, we cannot help recollecting with sorrow that
most of them have been pure and honest, at least at some former period.
We say "most of them," because there are some who have been corrupted,
vitiated, depraved, not only from their youth, but from tenderest
infancy,--even from their very birth, if we may say so; and we shall
prove it as we proceed.

We ask ourselves, then, with painful curiosity, what chain of fatal
causes could thus debase these unhappy creatures, who have known shame
and chastity? There are so many declivities, alas, which verge to that
fall! It is rarely the passion of the deprav