The first stitch was made just as the clocks were striking the hour of
five, on the morning of the fourteenth of April, 1831. The last was
drawn that day two months, precisely as the same clocks struck twelve.
For four hours Adrienne sat bending over her toil, deeply engrossed in
the occupation, and flattering herself with the fruits of her success. I
learned much of the excellent child's true character in these brief hours.
Her mind wandered over her hopes and fears, recurring to her other
labors, and the prices she received for occupations so wearying and
slavish. By the milliner, she was paid merely as a common sewing-girl,
though her neatness, skill and taste might well have entitled her to
double wages. A franc a day was the usual price for girls of an inferior
caste, and out of this they were expected to find their own lodgings and
food. But the poor revolution had still a great deal of private misery to
answer for, in the way of reduced wages. Those who live on the
frivolities of mankind, or, what is the same thing, their luxuries, have two
sets of victims to plunder--the consumer, and the real producer, or the
operative. This is true where men are employed, but much truer in the
case of females. The last are usually so helpless, that they often cling to
oppression and wrong, rather than submit to be cast entirely upon the
world. The marchande de mode who employed Adrienne was as rusee
as a politician who had followed all the tergiversations of Gallic policy,
since the year '89. She was fully aware of what a prize she possessed in
the unpracticed girl, and she felt the importance of keeping her in
ignorance of her own value. By paying the franc, it might give her
assistant premature notions of her own importance; but, by bringing her
down to fifteen sous, humility could be inculcated, and the chance of
keeping her doubled. This, which would have defeated a bargain with
any common couturiere, succeeded perfectly with Adrienne. She
received her fifteen sous with humble thankfulness, in constant