self. He looked at it with an uncomfortable foreboding, assured that
it must bring him some new care, or report some strange disaster.

He sat down, and tore open the envelope. He bounded from his seat again
with surprise--the letter enclosed fifteen notes of the Bank of France! It
is no fairy tale, but simple history; fifteen good notes of one thousand
francs each.

Inside the envelope was written:--"This treasure belongs to you as your
property. Use it without scruple. The hand that transmits it does but
accomplish a legitimate restitution. May the gifts of Fortune conduct you
to the Temple of Happiness!" There was no signature.

"Why, it is a dream, a hallucination. Am I growing light-headed?" said the
Doctor. But no--it was no dream; there they were--before him--on the
little table--those, fifteen miraculous pieces of paper. He turned his
head away from them; but when he looked again, there they were--in the
same place--in the same order--motionless. I leave you to guess his
agitation and his many mingled emotions. From whom could this godsend have
come? He read and reread, and turned the letter in every direction. He
racked his brain to no purpose to discover his anonymous benefactor. He
knew, and was known to, scarcely any one. He strode about his chamber--as
well as he could stride in it--inventing the wildest suppositions, which
were rejected as soon as made. Suddenly he stopped--struck his forehead as
a new thought occurred to him--"Bah!" he cried; "absurd!--impossible!--and
yet----"

In a moment he was at the door of the Countess. He paused a moment before
he knocked. There was from the landing-place a window at right angles to
that of the old woman's apartment and if her window-curtain happened to be
drawn aside, which, however, was rarely the case, it was easy to see from
it into her room. On the present occasion, not only was the curtain drawn
aside, but her window was open, and the Doctor could see this fairy,
accused of lavishing banknotes of a thousand francs, kneeling before a
wretched stove, striving with her feeble breath to rekindle a few bits of
charcoal, on which there stood some indescribable culinary vessel,
containing an odious sort of porridge, at once her dinner and her
breakfast!

The Doctor shook his head--it could not be the Countess. Yet, completely
to satisfy himself, he entered. She gave him her ordinary welcome, neither
more nor less--talked, as usual, of her former masters, of the