mself as ingenuously satisfied
and triumphant as a general after a victory which has been costly in
soldiers.

Nothing could be more melancholy than the sombre appearance of the vast
ward of the hospital, into which we now introduce the reader. The length
of its high, dark walls, pierced here and there with grated windows like
those of a prison, was filled with two rows of beds parallel, and
faintly lighted by the sepulchral glare of a lamp hanging from the
ceiling. The atmosphere is so nauseous, so heavy, that the fresh
patients frequently did not become accustomed to it without danger, and
this increase of suffering is a sort of tax which every newcomer
invariably pays for his miserable sojourn in the hospital. In one of the
beds was the corpse of a patient who had just died.

Amongst the females who did not sleep, and who had been present whilst
the priest performed the last rites with the dying woman, were three
persons whose names have been already mentioned in this history,--Mlle.
de Fermont, the daughter of the unfortunate widow ruined by the cupidity
of Jacques Ferrand; La Lorraine, the poor laundress, to whom
Fleur-de-Marie had formerly given the small sum of money she had left;
and Jeanne Duport, the sister of Pique-Vinaigre.

La Lorraine was a woman about twenty, with mild and regular features,
but extremely pale and thin; she was consumptive to the last degree, and
there was no hope of saving her. She was aware of her condition, and was
slowly dying.

"There is another gone!" said La Lorraine, in a faint voice, and
speaking to herself. "She will suffer no more; she is very happy!"

"She is very happy if she has no children!" added Jeanne.

"Aren't you asleep, neighbour?" asked La Lorraine. "How are you after
your first night here? Last night, when you came in, they made you go to
bed directly, and I dared not speak to you, because I heard you sob so."

"Yes, I cried a good deal; but I went to sleep at last, and only awoke
when the noise of the doors roused me; and when the priest and the
sisters came in and knelt down; I saw it was some woman who was dying,
and I said a _Pater_ and _Ave_ for her."

"And so did I; and, as I am ill with the same complaint as she had, I
could not help crying out, 'There is one who suffers no more; she is
very happy!'"

"Yes, as I said, if she has no children."

"Then you have children?"

"Three!" said Pique-Vinaigre's sister with a sigh. "And you?"

"I had a litt