exclaimed chidingly: "Each has his own griefs to bear, it is not wise to
take strangers' troubles so deeply to heart."

"Strangers' troubles," she repeated, mournfully, and went to rest.

White-haired woman, why have you remained so young? All the cares and
sorrows of youth and age are torturing you at the same time! One love
is fighting a mortal battle with another in your breast. Which will
conquer?

She knows, she knew it ere she entered the tent. The mother fled from
the child, but she cannot abandon her new-found son. Oh, maternal love,
thou dost hover in radiant bliss far above the clouds, and amid choirs of
angels! Oh, maternal heart, thou dost bleed pierced with swords, more
full of sorrows than any other!

Poor, poor Florette! On this July morning she was enduring superhuman
tortures, all the sins she had committed arrayed themselves against her,
shrieking into her ear that she was a lost woman, and there could be no
pardon for her either in this world or the next. Yet!--the clouds drift
by, birds of passage migrate, the musician wanders singing from land to
land, finds love, and remorselessly strips off light fetters to seek
others. His child imitates the father, who had followed the example of
his, the same thing occurring back to their remotest ancestors! But
eternal justice? Will it measure the fluttering leaf by the same
standard as the firmly-rooted plant?

When Zorrillo saw Flora by the daylight, he said, kindly: "You have been
weeping?"