this time the two boats, in the first of which were
Nicholas and Fleur-de-Marie and in the other Calabash and Madame
Seraphin, left the bank slowly.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE HAPPINESS OF MEETING.

Before the reader is made acquainted with the _denouement_ of the drama
then passing in Nicholas's boat, we shall beg leave to retrace our
steps.

Shortly after Fleur-de-Marie had quitted St. Lazare in company of Madame
Seraphin, La Louve also left that prison. Thanks to the recommendations
of Madame Armand and the governor, who were desirous of recompensing her
for her kindness towards Mont Saint-Jean, the few remaining days the
beloved of Martial had still to remain in confinement were remitted her.
A complete change had come over this hitherto depraved, degraded, and
intractable being. Forever brooding over the description of the
peaceful, wild, and retired life, so beautifully depictured by
Fleur-de-Marie, La Louve entertained the utmost horror and disgust of
her past life. To bury herself with Martial in the deep shades of some
vast forest, such was her waking and dreaming thought,--the one fixed
idea of her existence, against which all her former evil inclinations
had in vain struggled when, separating herself from La Goualeuse, whose
growing influence she feared, this singular creature had retired to
another part of St. Lazare.

To complete this sincere though rapid conversion, still more assured by
the ineffectual resistance attempted by the perverse and froward habits
of her companion, Fleur-de-Marie, following the dictates of her own
natural good sense, had thus reasoned:

"La Louve, a violent and determined creature, is passionately fond of
Martial. She would, then, hail with delight the means of quitting the
disgraceful life she now, for the first time, views with shame and
disgust, for the purpose of entirely devoting herself to the rude,
unpolished man whose taste she so entirely partakes of, and who seeks to
hide himself from the world, as much from inclination as from a desire
of escaping from the universal reprobation in which his family is
viewed."

Assisted by these small materials, gleaned during her conversation with
La Louve, Fleur-de-Marie, in giving a right direction to the unbridled
passion and restraining the daring hardihood of the reckless creature,
had positively converted a lost, wretched being into an honest woman;
for what could the most virtuous of her sex have desired more than to