f fortune,--these
ladies, properly belonging to the best society,--come every week to pass
long hours with the miserable prisoners of St. Lazare; watching in these
degraded souls for the least indication of an aspiration towards good,
the least regret for a past criminal life, and encouraging the good
tendencies, urging repentance, and, by the potent magic of the words,
Duty, Honour, Virtue, withdrawing from time to time one of these
abandoned, fallen, degraded, despised creatures, from the depths of
utter pollution.

Accustomed to delicacy and the most polished breeding of the highest
circles, these courageous females quit their homes, after having pressed
their lips on the virgin foreheads of their daughters, pure as the
angels of heaven, and go into dark prisons to brave the coarse
indifference or infamous language of these thieves and lost women.

Faithful to their tasks of high morality, they boldly plunge into the
tainted soil, place their hands on those gangrened hearts, and, if any
feeble pulsation of honour reveals to them a slight hope of recovery,
they contend for and snatch from irrevocable perdition the wretched soul
of which they have never despaired.

Having said so much by way of introduction to the new scenes to which we
are about to direct attention, we will introduce the reader to St.
Lazare, an immense edifice of imposing and repulsive aspect, situated in
the Faubourg St. Denis.

Ignorant of the shocking drama that was passing at her own house, Madame
d'Harville had gone to the prison, after having received certain
information from Madame de Lucenay as to the two unhappy females whom
the cupidity of Jacques Ferrand had plunged into misery. Madame de
Blinval, one of the patronesses of the charity of the young prisoners,
being on this day unable to accompany Clemence to St. Lazare, she had
gone thither alone. She was received with great attention by the
governor and the several female superintendents, who were distinguished
by their black garments and the blue riband with the silver medal which
they wore around their necks. One of these superintendents, a female of
mature age, with a serious but kind expression of countenance, remained
alone with Madame d'Harville, in a small room attached to the registry
office.

We may easily suppose that there is often unrecognised devotion,
understanding, commiseration, and sagacity amongst the respectable
females who devote themselves to the humble and obscu