destination, as letters which contain bad news generally do.

CHAPTER XV.~~CHARLOTTE'S JOURNEY.

One gray morning Charlotte was cutting the last bunches from the vines;
the poet was at work, and Dr. Hirsch was asleep, when the postman
reached Aulnettes.

"Ah! a letter from Indret!" said D'Argenton, slowly opening his
newspapers,--"and some verses by Hugo!"

Why did the poet watch this unopened letter as a dog watches a bone that
he does not wish himself, and is yet determined that no one else shall
touch? Simply because Charlotte's eyes had kindled at the sight of it,
and because this most selfish of beings felt that for a moment he had
become a secondary object in the mother's eyes.

From the hour of Jack's departure, his mother's love for him had
increased. She avoided speaking of him, however, lest she should
irritate her poet He divined this, and his hatred and jealousy of
the child increased. And when the early letters of Ron-die contained
complaints of Jack, he was very much delighted. But this was not enough.
He wished to mortify and degrade the boy still more. His hour had come.
At the first words of the letter, for he finally opened it, his eyes
flamed with malicious joy. "Ah! I knew it!" he cried, and he handed the
sheet to Charlotte.

What a terrible blow for her! Wounded in her maternal pride before the
poet, wounded, too, by his evident satisfaction, the poor woman was
still more overwhelmed by the reproaches of her own conscience. "It is
my own fault!" she said to herself, "why did I abandon him?"

Now he must be saved, and at all hazards. But where should she find the
money? She had nothing. The sale of her furniture had brought in some
millions of francs, but they had been quickly spent. The trifles of
jewelry she had would not bring half the necessary sum. She never
thought of appealing to D'Argenton. First, he hated the boy; and next,
he was very miserly. Besides, he was far from rich. They lived with
great economy in the winter, the better to keep up their hospitality
during the summer.

"I have always felt," said D'Argenton, after leaving her time to finish
the letter, "that this boy was bad at heart!"

She made no reply; indeed she hardly heard what he said. She was
thinking that her child would go to prison if she could not obtain the
money.

He continued, "What a disgrace this is to me!" The mother was still
saying to herself, "The money, where shall I get it?"

He determined t