plaster, kneeling, or rather doubled up,
on the floor, her hands folded. The girl was dying. A brazier of burnt
charcoal told the tale of that dreadful morning. The domino cloak and
hood were lying on the ground. The bed was undisturbed. The unhappy
creature, stricken to the heart by a mortal thrust, had, no doubt,
made all her arrangements on her return from the opera. A candle-wick,
collapsed in the pool of grease that filled the candle-sconce, showed
how completely her last meditations had absorbed her. A handkerchief
soaked with tears proved the sincerity of the Magdalen's despair, while
her classic attitude was that of the irreligious courtesan. This abject
repentance made the priest smile.

Esther, unskilled in dying, had left the door open, not thinking that
the air of two rooms would need a larger amount of charcoal to make it
suffocating; she was only stunned by the fumes; the fresh air from the
staircase gradually restored her to a consciousness of her woes.

The priest remained standing, lost in gloomy meditation, without being
touched by the girl's divine beauty, watching her first movements as if
she had been some animal. His eyes went from the crouching figure to
the surrounding objects with evident indifference. He looked at the
furniture in the room; the paved floor, red, polished, and cold,
was poorly covered with a shabby carpet worn to the string. A little
bedstead, of painted wood and old-fashioned shape, was hung with yellow
cotton printed with red stars, one armchair and two small chairs, also
of painted wood, and covered with the same cotton print of which the
window-curtains were also made; a gray wall-paper sprigged with flowers
blackened and greasy with age; a fireplace full of kitchen utensils of
the vilest kind, two bundles of fire-logs; a stone shelf, on which lay
some jewelry false and real, a pair of scissors, a dirty pincushion, and
some white scented gloves; an exquisite hat perched on the water-jug,
a Ternaux shawl stopping a hole in the window, a handsome gown hanging
from a nail; a little hard sofa, with no cushions; broken clogs and
dainty slippers, boots that a queen might have coveted; cheap china
plates, cracked or chipped, with fragments of a past meal, and nickel
forks--the plate of the Paris poor; a basket full of potatoes and dirty
linen, with a smart gauze cap on the top; a rickety wardrobe, with
a glass door, open and empty, and on the shelves sundry
pawn-tickets,--this wa