Such a kind of death being mostly unheard of—especially in New York—it will be necessary to justify the title by a somewhat fuller résumé of the story, than the journalist favors us with.
Marie of Montauban was as pretty a girl as the traveler might see in going through all of southern France; and a pretty girl of southern France, is more than pretty in any other quarter of France.
Her father had been a small propriétaire, and had married a descendant of an old family, under circumstances of that vague and wild romance which grew up a little after the old Revolution. Both the parents, however, died early in life: she inherited from the mother exceeding delicacy, and a refinement, which agreed very poorly with the poverty to which her father's improvidence had left her an heir.
Admired and beloved, and sometimes courted by those about her, she resolutely determined to secure her own support. She commenced in a romantic way—by quitting secretly her home, and throwing herself upon a very broad and a very wicked world. Fortune guided her to the home of a worthy baker; she here learned the smaller mysteries of his craft, and made such show in the front shop of her new-found patron, as bewitched the provincial gailliards, and made its tale upon the heart of the baker's son.
In short, the son wooed in earnest; the baker protested: and whether it was the protest (which is sure to kindle higher flame) or the honest heart of the wooer himself, Marie forgot the earnest longings, which her mother's nature had planted in her, and became the runaway wife of the runaway baker's son.
All French runaways (except from Government) go to Paris: therefore it was, that in a year's time, you might have seen the humble sign of the baker's son upon a modest shop of the Boulevard Beaumarchais. Beauty is always found out in Paris, and it is generally admired. Therefore it was, that the baker's son prospered, and the Café de Paris heard mention of the beautiful baker's wife of the Beaumarchais.
But, with the sight of the Louvre, the Tuileries, and all the elegancies of metropolitan life, the old longings of the motherly nature came back to the humiliated Marie. She stole hours for reading and for music, and quieted her riotous ambition with the ambition of knowledge.
Still, however, her admirers besieged her; but thanks to her birth, besieged in vain. From month to month she attended her shop; and from month to month beguiled her mission with reading of old stories, and with the music of her guitar.
Now, it happened that in this time, a certain Jacques Arago (well known to fame) chanced upon a day to visit the baker's shop of the Boulevard Beaumarchais; and it further happened, that as the customer was a traveler and a savant, that he fell into talk with the beautiful Marie, who even then held in her fingers some work of the visitor himself.