"You must not swear."

"Is it swearing to give your sacred word?--Well, from that day I have
worked in this room like a lost creature at shirt-making at twenty-eight
sous apiece, so as to live by honest labor. For a month I have had
nothing to eat but potatoes, that I might keep myself a good girl and
worthy of Lucien, who loves me and respects me as a pattern of virtue.
I have made my declaration before the police to recover my rights, and
submitted to two years' surveillance. They are ready enough to enter
your name on the lists of disgrace, but make every difficulty about
scratching it out again. All I asked of Heaven was to enable me to keep
my resolution.

"I shall be nineteen in the month of April; at my age there is still a
chance. It seems to me that I was never born till three months ago.--I
prayed to God every morning that Lucien might never know what my former
life had been. I bought that Virgin you see there, and I prayed to her
in my own way, for I do not know any prayers; I cannot read nor write,
and I have never been into a church; I have never seen anything of God
excepting in processions, out of curiosity."

"And what do you say to the Virgin?"

"I talk to her as I talk to Lucien, with all my soul, till I make him
cry."

"Oh, so he cries?"

"With joy," said she eagerly, "poor dear boy! We understand each other
so well that we have but one soul! He is so nice, so fond, so sweet
in heart and mind and manners! He says he is a poet; I say he is
god.--Forgive me! You priests, you see, don't know what love is. But,
in fact, only girls like me know enough of men to appreciate such as
Lucien. A Lucien, you see, is as rare as a woman without sin. When you
come across him you can love no one else; so there! But such a being
must have his fellow; so I want to be worthy to be loved by my Lucien.
That is where my trouble began. Last evening, at the opera, I was
recognized by some young men who have no more feeling than a tiger
has pity--for that matter, I could come round the tiger! The veil of
innocence I had tried to wear was worn off; their laughter pierced
my brain and my heart. Do not think you have saved me; I shall die of
grief."

"Your veil of innocence?" said the priest. "Then you have treated Lucien
with the sternest severity?"

"Oh, Father, how can you, who know him, ask me such a question!" she
replied with a smile. "Who can resist a god?"

"Do not be blasphemous," said the priest mildly.