others to kindness."
Then, interrupting herself, to burst again into a loud fit of
sobs,--"Well, well, it's done,--it's finished,--all over! And so it must
be some day or other. I was wrong to think any otherwise. It's
done--done--done!"

"Courage! Courage! I will think of you, as you will remember me."

"Oh, as to that, they may tear me to pieces before they shall ever make
me forget you! I may grow old,--as old as the streets,--but I shall
always have your angel face before me. The first word I will teach my
child shall be your name, Goualeuse; for but for you it would have
perished with cold."

"Listen to me, Mont Saint-Jean!" said Fleur-de-Marie, deeply affected by
the attachment of this unhappy woman. "I cannot promise to do anything
for you, although I know some very charitable persons; but, for your
child, it is a different thing; it is wholly innocent; and the persons
of whom I speak will, perhaps, take charge of it, and bring it up, when
you can resolve on parting from it."

"Part from it! Never, oh, never!" exclaimed Mont Saint-Jean, with
excitement. "What would become of me now, when I have so built upon it?"

"But how will you bring it up? Boy or girl, it ought to be made honest;
and for that--"

"It must eat honest bread. I know that, Goualeuse,--I believe it. It is
my ambition; and I say so to myself every day. So, in leaving here, I
will never put my foot under a bridge again. I will turn rag-picker,
street-sweeper,--something honest; for I owe that, if not to myself, at
least to my child, when I have the honour of having one," she added,
with a sort of pride.

"And who will take care of your child whilst you are at work?" inquired
the Goualeuse. "Will it not be better, if possible, as I hope it will
be, to put it in the country with some worthy people, who will make a
good country girl or a stout farmer's boy of it? You can come and see it
from time to time; and one day you may, perhaps, find the means to live
near it constantly. In the country, one lives on so little!"

"Yes, but to separate myself from it,--to separate myself from it! It
would be my only joy,--I, who have nothing else in the world to
love,--nothing that loves me!"

"You must think more of it than of yourself, my poor Mont Saint-Jean. In
two or three days I will write to Madame Armand, and if the application
I mean to make in favour of your child should succeed, you will have no
occasion to say to it, as you said so painfull