could recall no instance of such a passion.

Towards the end of that very January, one evening when Giardini was
chatting with a girl who had come to buy her supper, about the divine
Marianna--so poor, so beautiful, so heroically devoted, and who had,
nevertheless, "gone the way of them all," the cook, his wife, and the
street-girl saw coming towards them a woman fearfully thin, with a
sunburned, dusty face; a nervous walking skeleton, looking at the
numbers, and trying to recognize a house.

"_Ecco la Marianna_!" exclaimed the cook.

Marianna recognized Giardini, the erewhile cook, in the poor fellow she
saw, without wondering by what series of disasters he had sunk to keep
a miserable shop for secondhand food. She went in and sat down, for she
had come from Fontainebleau. She had walked fourteen leagues that day,
after begging her bread from Turin to Paris.

She frightened that terrible trio! Of all her wondrous beauty nothing
remained but her fine eyes, dimmed and sunken. The only thing faithful
to her was misfortune.

She was welcomed by the skilled old instrument mender, who greeted her
with unspeakable joy.

"Why, here you are, my poor Marianna!" said he, warmly. "During your
absence they sold up my instrument and my operas."

It would have been difficult to kill the fatted calf for the return of
the Samaritan, but Giardini contributed the fag end of a salmon, the
trull paid for wine, Gambara produced some bread, Signora Giardini lent
a cloth, and the unfortunates all supped together in the musician's
garret.

When questioned as to her adventures, Marianna would make no reply; she
only raised her beautiful eyes to heaven and whispered to Giardini:

"He married a dancer!"

"And how do you mean to live?" said the girl. "The journey has ruined
you, and----"

"And made me an old woman," said Marianna. "No, that is not the result
of fatigue or hardship, but of grief."

"And why did you never send your man here any money?" asked the girl.

Marianna's only answer was a look, but it went to the woman's heart.

"She is proud with a vengeance!" she exclaimed. "And much good it has
done her!" she added in Giardini's ear.

All that year musicians took especial care of their instruments, and
repairs did not bring in enough to enable the poor couple to pay their
way; the wife, too, did not earn much by her needle, and they were
compelled to turn their talents to account in the lowest form of
employment. They