n her distress, was from the hand of Mlle. Galet, and
here was what this retired florist of the Rue Mouffetard wrote:

"MA CHERE DEMOISELLE: I learn that you have returned. What happiness for
me! and how I long to see you! You are my good angel, whom I should
like to see every day of my life, and the time has seemed so long to me
without you. When you enter the garret of the poor, infirm old woman,
it seems to her as though there were three suns in the heavens; when you
abandon her, the blackness of midnight surrounds her. Mme. de Lorcy has
been very good to me. As my angel requested her, she came a fortnight
since to pay me the quarter due of my pension. She is a very charitable
lady, and she dresses beautifully; but she is a little hard on poor
people. She asks a great many questions; she wants to know everything.
She reproached me with spending too much, being too fond of luxury, and
you know how that is. She forgets that everything is higher priced than
it used to be, that meat and vegetables are exorbitant, and that just
now eggs cost one franc and fifty centimes a dozen. Besides, a poor
creature, deprived of the use of her limbs, as I am, cannot go to market
herself, and it is quite possible that my _femme de menage_ does not
purchase as wisely as she might. I know I have great scenes with her
sometimes for bringing me early vegetables; _le bon Dieu_ can, at least,
bear me witness that I am no glutton.

"The good Mme. de Lorcy scolded me about a bouquet of camellias she saw
on my table, just like those for which I have been grateful to my angel.
I don't know what notions she got into her head about them. Ah!
well, _ma chere demoiselle_, I have learned since that these double
camellias--they are variegated, red and white--came to me from a man,
for, at present, as it would appear, men have taken to give me bouquets
and making me visits; it is rather late in the day. The particular man
to whom I refer presented himself one fine morning, and, telling me that
you had spoken to him of me, said that he wished to assure himself
that I was well and wanted nothing. He returned several times, always
pampering me with some attention or other. But the best of all was when
he came to tell me that my angel had returned. What a man he is! he has
surely dropped right down from the skies! One evening when I was sick he
gave me my medicine himself, and would have sat up with me all night
if I had been willing to let him. You must t