"I understand," said Cephyse, blushing; "but I will rather die than lead such a life."
"And there you will do well--for in that case," added Jacques, in a deep and hollow voice, "I will myself show you how to die."
"I count upon you, Jacques," answered Cephyse, embracing her lover with excited feeling; then she added, sorrowfully: "It was a kind of presentiment, when just now I felt so sad, without knowing why, in the midst of all our gayety--and drank to the Cholera, so that we might die together."
"Well! perhaps the Cholera will come," resumed Jacques, with a gloomy air; "that would save us the charcoal, which we may not even be able to buy."
"I can only tell you one thing, Jacques, that to live and die together, you will always find me ready."
"Come, dry your eyes," said he, with profound emotion."Do not let us play the children before these men."
Some minutes after, the coach took the direction to Jacques's lodging, where he was to change his clothes, before proceeding to the debtors'
prison.
Let us repeat, with regard to the hunchback's sister--for there are things which cannot be too often repeated--that one of the most fatal consequences of the Inorganization of Labor is the Insufficiency of Wages.
The insufficiency of wages forces inevitably the greater number of young girls, thus badly paid, to seek their means of subsistence in connections which deprave them.