ild!" interrupted Madame Seraphin, impatiently
offering her arm to her victim, "you forget that I said we were already
behind our time."

"Pray, madame, grant us a little more time," said Rigolette. "It is so
very long since I saw my dear Goualeuse!"

"I should be glad to do so," replied Madame Seraphin, much annoyed at
this meeting between the two friends; "but it is now three o'clock, and
we have a long way to go. However, I will manage to allow you ten
minutes longer gossip. So pray make the best of your time."

"And tell me, I pray, of yourself," said Fleur-de-Marie, affectionately
pressing the hands of Rigolette between her own. "Are you still the same
merry, light-hearted, and happy creature I always knew you?"

"I was happy and gay enough a few days ago; but now--"

"You sorrowful? I can hardly believe it."

"Ah, but indeed I am! Not that I am at all changed from what you always
found me,--a regular Roger Bontemps,--one to whom nothing was a trouble.
But then, you see, everybody is not like me; so that, when I see those I
love unhappy, why, naturally, that makes me unhappy, too."

"Still the same kind, warm-hearted girl!"

"Why, who could help being grieved as I am? Just imagine my having come
hither to visit a poor young creature,--a sort of neighbouring lodger in
the house where I live,--as meek and mild as a lamb she was, poor thing!
Well, she has been most shamefully and unjustly accused,--that she has;
never mind of what just now! Her name is Louise Morel. She is the
daughter of an honest and deserving man, a lapidary, who has gone mad in
consequence of her being put in prison."

At the name of Louise Morel, one of the victims of the notary's
villainy, Madame Seraphin started, and gazed earnestly at Rigolette. The
features of the grisette were, however, perfectly unknown to her;
nevertheless, from that instant, the _femme de charge_ listened with an
attentive ear to the conversation of the two girls.

"Poor thing," continued the Goualeuse; "how happy it must make her to
find that you have not forgotten her in her misfortunes!"

"And that is not all; it really seems as though some spell hung over me!
But, truly and positively, this is the second poor prisoner I have left
my home to-day to visit! I have come a long way, and also from a
prison,--but that was a place of confinement for men."

"You, Rigolette,--in a prison for men?"

"Yes, I have, indeed. I have a very dejected customer there, I can