Page:Tales of two countries.djvu/17



had mounted the shining marble steps without mishap, without labour, sustained by her great beauty and her fine nature alone. She had taken her place in the salons of the rich and great without paying for her admittance with her honour or her good name. Yet no one could say whence she came, though people whispered that it was from the depths.

As a waif of a Parisian faubourg, she had starved through her childhood among surroundings of vice and poverty, such as those only can conceive who know them by experience. Those of us who get our knowledge from books and from hearsay have to strain our imagination in order to form an idea of the hereditary misery of a great city, and yet our most terrible imaginings are apt to pale before the reality.

It had been only a question of time when vice should get its clutches upon her, as a cog-wheel seizes whoever comes too near the machine. After whirling her around through a short life of shame and degradation, it would, with mechanical