“The place might have been a good one. There were only three in the family,—the gentleman and his wife, and a son of twenty-five. Every morning, father and son left for Paris by the first train, and only came home to dinner at about six o’clock. I was therefore alone all day with the woman. Unfortunately, she was a cross and disagreeable person, who, never having had a servant before, felt an insatiable desire of showing and exercising her authority. She was, moreover, extremely suspicious, and found some pretext to visit regularly my trunks once or twice a week, to see if I had not concealed some of her napkins or silver spoons. Having told her that I had once been a laundress, she made me wash and iron all the clothes in the house, and was forever accusing me of using too much soap and too much coal. Still I liked the place well enough; and I had a little room in the attic; which I thought charming, and where I spent delightful evenings reading or sewing.
“But luck was against me. The young gentleman of the house took a fancy to me, and determined to make me his mistress. I discouraged him in a way; but he persisted in his loathsome attention, until one night he broke into my room, and I was compelled to shout for help with all my might, before I could get rid of him.
“The next day I left that house; but I tried in vain to find another situation in Bougival. I resolved then to seek a place in Paris. I had a big trunk full of good clothes, and about a hundred francs of savings; and I felt no anxiety.
“When I arrived in Paris, I went straight to an intelligence-office. I was extremely well received by a very affable old woman who promised to get me a good place, and, in the mean time, solicited me to board with her. She kept a sort of boarding-house for servants out of place; and there were there some fifty or sixty of us, who slept at night in long dormitories.
“Time went by, and still I did not find that famous place. The board was expensive, too, for my scanty means; and I determined to leave. I started in quest of new lodgings, followed by a porter, carrying my trunk; but as I was crossing the Boulevard, not getting quick enough out of the way of a handsome private carriage which was coming at full trot, I was knocked down, and trampled under the horses’s feet.”
Without allowing Maxence to interrupt her,
“I had lost consciousness,” went on Mlle. Lucienne. “When I came to my senses, I was sitting in a drugstore; and three or four persons were busy around me. I had no fracture, but only some severe contusions, and a deep cut on the head.
“The physician who had attended me requested me to try and walk; but I could not even stand on my feet. Then he asked me where I lived, that I might be taken there; and I was compelled to own that I was a poor servant out of place, without a home or a friend to care for me.
“‘In that case,’ said the doctor to the druggist, ‘we must send her to the hospital.’
“And they sent for a cab.