I called to
mind the things I had been told of this famous woman: her caprices
that were immediately obeyed, her extravagances, her coffin, her
pride.

I felt the poor little sufferer trembling at my side. She saw
this barbarous idol rise up and throw unconsciously upon her the
splattering flood of her golden ornaments.

And I had a desire to cry out with grief at this meeting face to face
of the two. And I said to myself:

"They are both born of woman. One holds a palm, and the other an old
umbrella so shabby that she does not dare to open it before me.

"The one trails an admiring throng at her feet, and the other tatters
of leather. The one sells her sorrow for the weight of gold and not
a sob comes from her mouth that does not have the clinking sound of
gold. Not a single sob of the other is heard."

And something cried aloud within me:

"The one is a human actress. She is applauded because she is of the
same clay as those who listen to her. And they have need of the lie on
which the most beautiful roles are builded.

"But the other, she is an actress of God. She plays a part so great
and so sorrowful that she has not found one man who understands her
and who is rich enough to pay her.

"And the great actress has never attained, even in her most beautiful
roles, the true genius of sorrow which makes the little prostitute
rest her forehead upon me."

THE GOODNESS OF GOD

She was a dainty and delicate little creature who worked in a shop.
She was, perhaps, not very intelligent, but she had soft, black eyes.
They looked at you a little sadly, and then drooped. You felt that
she was affectionate and commonplace with that tender commonplaceness,
which real poets understand, and which is the absence of hate.

You knew that she was as simple as the modest room in which she lived
alone with her little cat that some one had given her. Every morning
before she went to the shop, she left for her a little bit of milk in
a bowl.

And like her gentle mistress the little cat had sad, kind eyes. She
warmed herself on the window-sill in the sun beside a pot of basil.
Sometimes she licked her little paw, and used it as a brush on the
short fur of her head. Sometimes she played with a mouse.

One day the cat and the mistress both found themselves pregnant,
the one by a handsome fellow who deserted her, and the other by a
beautiful tom-cat who also went his way.

But there was this difference. The poor girl