der, which bled till the room looked like a
slaughter-house."

"And how did you become--what--we--are?" said Fleur-de-Marie,
hesitatingly.

"Why, little Charley, Madeleine's son, who was afterwards drowned at the
Ile des Cygnes, was my first lover, almost from the time when he, his
mother, and his brother, came to lodge with us when we were but mere
children; after him the tiler was my lover, who threatened else to turn
me out-of-doors. I was afraid that Mere Madeleine would also send me
away if she discovered anything. She did, however; but as she was
really a good creature, she said, 'As it is so, and you are sixteen
years old, and fit for nothing, for you are too self-willed to take a
situation or learn a business, you shall go with me and be inscribed in
the police-books; as you have no relations, I will answer for you, as I
brought you up, as one may say; and that will give you a position
authorised by the government, and you will have nothing to do but to be
merry and dress smart. I shall have no uneasiness about you, and you
will no longer be a charge to me. What do you say to it, my girl?' 'Why,
I think indeed you are right,' was my answer; 'I had not thought of
that.' Well, we went to the Bureau des Moeurs. She answered for me, in
the usual way, and from that time I was _inscrite_. I met Mere Madeleine
a year afterwards. I was drinking with my man, and we asked her to join
us, and she told us that the tiler had been sentenced to the galleys.
Since then I have never seen her, but some one, I don't remember who,
declared that she had been seen at the Morgue three months ago. If it
were true, really so much the worse, for Mere Madeleine was a good sort
of woman,--her heart was in her hand, and she had no more gall than a
pigeon."

Fleur-de-Marie, though plunged young in an atmosphere of corruption, had
subsequently breathed so pure an air that she experienced a deeply
painful sensation at the horrid recital of La Louve. And if we have had
the sad courage to make it, it has been because all the world should
know that, hideous as it is, it is still a thousand times less revolting
than other countless realities.

Ignorance and misery often conduct the lower classes to these fearful
degradations, human and social.

Yes; there is a crowd of hovels and dens, where children and adults,
girls and boys, legitimate children and bastards, lying pell-mell on the
same mattress, have continually before their eyes these in