“That night I spent on a chair in a neighbor’s room. But the next day, when I went for my things, my former friend refused to give them, and presumed to keep every thing. I was compelled, though reluctantly, to resort to the intervention of the commissary of police.
“I gained my point. But the good days had gone. Luck did not follow me to the wretched furnished house where I hired a room. I had no sewing-machine, and but few acquaintances. By working fifteen or sixteen hours a day, I made thirty or forty cents. That was not enough to live on. Then work failed me altogether, and, piece by piece, every thing I had went to the pawnbroker’s. On a gloomy December morning, I was turned out of my room, and left on the pavement with a ten-cent-piece for my fortune.
“Never had I been so low; and I know not to what extremities I might have come at last, when I happened to think of that wealthy lady whose horses had upset me on the Boulevard. I had kept her card. Without hesitation, I went unto a grocery, and calling for some paper and a pen, I wrote, overcoming the last struggle of my pride,
“‘Do you remember, madame, a poor girl whom your carriage came near crushing to death? Once before she applied to you, and received no answer. She is to-day without shelter and without bread; and you are her supreme hope.’
“I placed these few lines in an envelope, and ran to the address indicated on the card. It was a magnificent residence, with a vast court-yard in front. In the porter’s lodge, five or six servants were talking as I came in, and looked at me impudently, from head to foot, when I requested them to take my letter to Mme. de Thaller. One of them, however, took pity on me,
“‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘come along!’
“He made me cross the yard, and enter the vestibule; and then,
“‘Give me your letter,’ he said, ‘and wait here for me.’”
Maxence was about to express the thoughts which Mme. de Thaller’s name naturally suggested to his mind, but Mlle. Lucienne interrupted him,
“In all my life,” she went on, “I had never seen any thing so magnificent as that vestibule with its tall columns, its tessellated floor, its large bronze vases filled with the rarest flowers, and its red velvet benches, upon which tall footmen in brilliant livery were lounging.