The father chained to the rowers' bench among the most abominable
ruffians, this loveliest of children perishing in hunger, misery, and
shame--what a terrible picture! Barbara beheld it with tangible
distinctness, and while the undignified old aristocrat, deprived of all
self-control, sobbed and besought her to have compassion, the girl who
had grown up amid poverty and care went back in memory to the days when,
to earn money for a thin soup, a bit of dry bread, a small piece of cheap
cow beef, or to protect herself from the importunity of an unpaid
tradesman, she had washed laces with her own delicate hands and seen
her nobly born, heroic father scratch crooked letters and scrawling
ornaments upon common gray tin.

The same fate, nay, one a thousand times worse, awaited this wonderfully
lovely patrician child, whose father was to wield the oars in the galleys
if no one interceded for the unfortunate man.

What was life!

From the height of happiness it led her directly to such an abyss of the
deepest woe.

What contrasts!

A day, an hour had transported her from bitter poverty and torturing
yearning to the side of the highest and greatest of monarchs, but who
could tell for how long--how soon the fall into the gulf awaited her?

A shudder ran through her frame, and a deep pity for the sweet creature
whose coloured likeness she held in her hand seized upon her.