"Because, when about to execute this project, I examined myself
sincerely, and my courage failed. I feel that I could never resume the
habit of labor, and renounce this mode of life, sometimes rich, as to
day, sometimes precarious,--but at least free and full of leisure, joyous
and without care, and at worst a thousand times preferable to living upon
four francs a week. Not that interest has guided me. Many times have I
refused to exchange a lover, who had little or nothing, for a rich man,
that I did not like. Nor have I ever asked anything for myself. Jacques
has spent perhaps ten thousand francs the last three or four months, yet
we only occupy two half-furnished rooms, because we always live out of
doors, like the birds: fortunately, when I first loved him, he had
nothing at all, and I had just sold some jewels that had been given me,
for a hundred francs, and put this sum in the lottery. As mad people and
fools are always lucky, I gained a prize of four thousand francs. Jacques
was as gay, and light-headed, and full of fun as myself, so we said: 'We
love each other very much, and, as long as this money lasts, we will keep
up the racket; when we have no more, one of two things will
happen--either we shall be tired of one another, and so part--or else we
shall love each other still, and then, to remain together, we shall try
and get work again; and, if we cannot do so, and yet will not part--a
bushel of charcoal will do our business!'"

"Good heaven!" cried Mother Bunch, turning pale.

"Be satisfied! we have not come to that. We had still something left,
when a kind of agent, who had paid court to me, but who was so ugly that
I could not bear him for all his riches, knowing that I was living with
Jacques asked me to--But why should I trouble you with all these details?
In one word, he lent Jacques money, on some sort of a doubtful claim he
had, as was thought, to inherit some property. It is with this money that