he girl. "And then,--where did you
get your wound? Tell me that, I conjure you."

"It is of my wound that I am just going to speak; for in truth, the more
I think of it, the more this adventure of the young lady seems to connect
itself with other facts."

"How so?"

"You must know that, for the last few days, singular things are passing
in the neighborhood of our factory. First, as we are in Lent, an abbe
from Paris (a tall, fine-looking man, they say) has come to preach in the
little village of Villiers, which is only a quarter of a league from our
works. The abbe has found occasion to slander and attack M. Hardy in his
sermons."

"How is that?"

"M. Hardy has printed certain rules with regard to our work, and the
rights and benefits he grants us. These rules are followed by various
maxims as noble as they are simple; with precepts of brotherly love such
as all the world can understand, extracted from different philosophies
and different religions. But because M. Hardy has chosen what is best in
all religions, the abbe concludes that M. Hardy has no religion at all,
and he has therefore not only attacked him for this in the pulpit, but
has denounced our factory as a centre of perdition and damnable
corruption, because, on Sundays, instead of going to listen to his
sermons, or to drink at a tavern, our comrades, with their wives and
children, pass their time in cultivating their little gardens, in
reading, singing in chorus, or dancing together in the common dwelling
house. The abbe has even gone so far as to say, that the neighborhood of
such an assemblage of atheists, as he calls us, might draw down the anger
of Heaven upon the country--that the hovering of Cholera was much talked
of, and that very possibly, thanks to our impious presence, the plague
might fall upon all our neighborhood."

"But to tell such things to ignorant people," exclaimed Mother Bunch, "is
likely to excite them to fatal actions."

"That is just what the abbe wants."

"What do you tell me?"

"The people of the environs, still more excited, no doubt by other
agitators, show themselves hostile to the workmen of our factory. Their
hatred, or at least their envy, has been turned to account. Seeing us
live all together, well lodged, well warmed, and comfortably clad,
active, gay, and laborious, their jealousy has been embittered by the
sermons, and by the secret manoeuvres of some depraved characters, who
are known to be bad workmen, in th