"It is for me to thank you, my dear, it is so kind in you to have thought at once of serving me! Once more I express my surprise."
"Why, that is very plain, Madame Duport," said Rigolette, with a charming smile. "Since I look like your daughter Catherine, that which you call my kindness ought not to surprise you."
"How kind! Thanks to you, I go away from here less sad than I thought; and then, perhaps, we may meet here again, for you come, like me, to see a prisoner?"
"Yes, madame," answered Rigolette, sighing.
"Then, adieu. I shall see you again; at least, I hope so, Miss Rigolette," said Jeanne Duport, after having cast her eyes on the address of the grisette.
"At least," thought Rigolette, resuming her seat, "I know now the address of this poor woman; and certainly M. Rudolph will interest himself for her when he knows how unfortunate she is, for he has always told me, 'If you know any one much to be pitied, address yourself to me.'"
And Rigolette taking her place, awaited with impatience the end of the conversation of her neighbor, in order to be able to ask for Germain.
Now a few words on the preceding scene. Unfortunately, it must be confessed, the indignation of the brother of Jeanne Duport was legitimate. Yes: in saying the law was _too dear_ for the poor, he said the truth. To plead before the civil tribunals is to incur enormous expenses, quite out of the reach of artisans, who barely exist on their scanty wages.
Let a mother or father of a family belonging to this ever-sacrificed class wish to obtain an obliteration of the conjugal tie; let them have all right to obtain it: will they obtain it? No; for there is no workman in a condition to spend four or five hundred francs for the onerous formalities of such a judgment.
Yet the poor have no other life than a domestic one; the good or bad conduct of the head of an artisan's family is not only a question of morality; but of _bread_. The fate of a woman of the people, such as we have endeavored to paint, does it deserve less interest, less protection, than that of a rich woman, who suffers from the bad conduct or infidelities of her husband, think you?
Nothing is more worthy of pity, doubtless, than the griefs of the heart. But when to these griefs is added, for an unfortunate mother, the misery of her children, is it not monstrous that the poverty of this woman places her without the law, and leaves her and her family without defense against the odious treatment of a drunken and worthless husband?