er in which the moving whiteness of the
clouds over the azure of the heavens was reflected, in which the golden
rays of a lovely sun broke with beautiful lustre, she thought with a
sigh of the magnificence of the Nature which she loved, which she
admired so poetically, and of which she was still deprived.

"What did you wish to say to me?" asked La Goualeuse of her companion,
who, seated beside her, was gloomy and silent.

"We must have an explanation," said La Louve, sternly; "things cannot go
on as they are."

"I do not understand you, La Louve."

"Just now, in the yard, referring to Mont Saint-Jean, I said to myself,
'I won't give way any more to La Goualeuse,' and yet I do give way now."

"But--"

"But I tell you it cannot continue so."

"In what have I offended you, La Louve?"

"Why, I am not the same person I was when you came here; no, I have
neither courage, strength, nor boldness."

Then suddenly checking herself, La Louve pulled up the sleeve of her
gown, and showing La Goualeuse her white arm, powerful, and covered with
black down, she showed her, on the upper part of it, an indelible
tattooing, representing a blue dagger half plunged in a red heart; over
this emblem were these words:

MORT AUX LACHES!
MARTIAL
P. L. V. (_pour la vie_.)
(DEATH TO COWARDS!
MARTIAL
FOR LIFE!)

"Do you see that?" asked La Louve.

"Yes; and it is so shocking, it quite frightens me," said La Goualeuse,
turning away her head.

"When Martial, my lover, wrote, with a red-hot needle, these words on my
arm, 'Death to Cowards!' he thought me brave; if he knew my behaviour
for the last three days, he would stick his knife in my body, as this
dagger is driven into this heart,--and he would be right, for he wrote
here, 'Death to Cowards!' and I am a coward."

"What have you done that is cowardly?"

"Everything."

"Do you regret the good resolution you made just now?"

"Yes."

"I cannot believe you."

"I say I do regret it,--for it is another proof of what you can do with
all of us. Didn't you understand what Mont Saint-Jean meant when she
went on her knees to thank you?"

"What did she say?"

"She said, speaking of you, that with nothing you turned us from evil to
good. I could have throttled her when she said it, for, to our shame, it
was true. Yes, in no time you change us from black to white. We listen
to you,--give way to our first feelings, and