undisturbed. The unhappy creature, stricken to the heart by a mortal
thrust, had, no doubt, made all her arrangements on her return from
the opera. A candle-wick, collapsed in the pool of grease that filled
the candle-sconce, showed how completely her last meditations had
absorbed her. A handkerchief soaked with tears proved the sincerity of
the Magdalen's despair, while her classic attitude was that of the
irreligious courtesan. This abject repentance made the priest smile.

Esther, unskilled in dying, had left the door open, not thinking that
the air of two rooms would need a larger amount of charcoal to make it
suffocating; she was only stunned by the fumes; the fresh air from the
staircase gradually restored her to a consciousness of her woes.

The priest remained standing, lost in gloomy meditation, without being
touched by the girl's divine beauty, watching her first movements as
if she had been some animal. His eyes went from the crouching figure
to the surrounding objects with evident indifference. He looked at the
furniture in the room; the paved floor, red, polished, and cold, was
poorly covered with a shabby carpet worn to the string. A little
bedstead, of painted wood and old-fashioned shape, was hung with
yellow cotton printed with red stars, one armchair and two small
chairs, also of painted wood, and covered with the same cotton print
of which the window-curtains were also made; a gray wall-paper
sprigged with flowers blackened and greasy with age; a fireplace full
of kitchen utensils of the vilest kind, two bundles of fire-logs; a
stone shelf, on which lay some jewelry false and real, a pair of
scissors, a dirty pincushion, and some white scented gloves; an
exquisite hat perched on the water-jug, a Ternaux shawl stopping a
hole in the window, a handsome gown hanging from a nail; a little hard
sofa, with no cushions; broken clogs and dainty slippers, boots that a