Volume III Part 48 (1/2)
”The actress was only two years older, and you see---”
”She whom the good sisters are watching now, was she an actress?”
”Oh, yes--what a fate! She had been beautiful as the day. She had plenty of money, equipages, diamonds, but, unfortunately, the small-pox disfigured her; then want came, then poverty--behold her dead in the hospital. Yet, she was not proud; on the contrary, she was kind and gentle to everybody; she told us that she had written to a gentleman whom she had known in her prosperity, who had loved her; she wrote to him to come and reclaim her body, because it hurt her feelings to think she would be dissected--cut in pieces.”
”And this gentleman has come?”
”No.”
”Oh! that is very cruel.”
”At each moment the poor woman asked for him, saying continually, 'Oh! he will come! oh! he will surely come;' and yet she died, and he had not come.”
”Her end must have been so much the more painful.”
”Oh, Lord, yes; for she dreaded so much what they would do to her body.”
”After having been rich and happy, to die here is sad! For us, it is only a change of misery.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE VISIT.
”Speaking of that,” resumed La Lorraine, after a moment's hesitation, ”I wish you would render me a service.”
”Speak.”
”If I should die, as is probable, before you leave this, I wish you would claim my body--I have the same dread as the actress; and I have put aside the small amount of money I have left, so that I can be buried.”
”Do not have such ideas.”
”Never mind--do you promise me?”
”Yes! but Lord be praised, that will not happen.”
”But, if it does happen, I shall not have, thanks to you, the same misfortune as the actress.”
”Poor lady, after having been rich, to end thus!”
”The actress was not the only one in this room who has been rich, Madame Jeanne.”
”Call me Jeanne, as I call you La Lorraine.”
”You are very kind.”
”Who is it that has been rich besides?”
”A young person not over fifteen, who was brought here last night, before you came. She was so weak that they were obliged to carry her. The sister said that this young girl and her mother were very respectable people, who had been ruined.”