ame is ineffaceable. As Clara talked to me of the
happiness that awaited her,--her marriage, her peaceful joys of home, I
could not help comparing my lot with hers; for, in spite of the kindness
showered upon me, my fate must always be miserable. You and Madame
Georges, in teaching me what virtue is, have taught me the depth of that
abasement into which I had fallen; nothing can take from me the brand of
having been the refuse of all that is vilest in the world. Alas! if the
knowledge of good and evil was to be so sad to me, why not have
abandoned me to my unhappy fate?"

"Oh, Marie, Marie!"

"Father, I speak ill, do I not? Alas! I dare not confess it; but I am at
times so ungrateful as to repine at the benefits heaped upon me, and to
say to myself, 'If I had not been snatched from infamy, why,
wretchedness, misery, blows, would soon have ended my life; and, at
least, I should have remained in ignorance of that purity which I must
for ever regret.'"

"Alas! Marie, that is indeed fatal! A nature ever so nobly endowed by
the Creator, though plunged but for one day in the foul mire from which
you have been extricated, will preserve for ever the ineffaceable
stigma."

"Yes, yes, my father," cried Fleur-de-Marie, full of grief, "I must
despair until I die!"

"You must despair of ever tearing out this frightful page from the book
of your existence," said the priest, in a sad and serious voice; "but
you must have faith in the infinite mercy of the Almighty. Here, on
earth, my poor child, there are for you tears, remorse, expiation; but,
one day, there,--up there," and he raised his hand to the sky, now
filling with stars, "there is pardon and everlasting happiness."

"Pity, pity, _mon Dieu_! I am so young, and my life may still endure so
long," said the Goualeuse, in a voice rent by agony, and falling at the
cure's knees almost involuntarily.

The priest was standing at the top of the hill, not far from where his
"modest mansion rose;" his black cassock, his venerable countenance,
shaded by long white locks, lighted by the last ray of twilight, stood
out from the horizon, which was of a deep transparency,--a perfect
clearness: pale gold in the west, sapphire over his head. The priest
again elevated towards heaven one of his tremulous hands, and gave the
other to Fleur-de-Marie, who bedewed it with her tears. The hood of her
gray cloak fell at this moment from her shoulders, displaying the
perfect outline of her lovely