ho sometimes worked into the night when
business was good, at about one o'clock one morning perceived a strong
smell of carbonic acid gas, and heard the groans of a dying man. The
fumes and the gasping came from a garret over the two rooms forming
her dwelling, and she supposed that a young man who had but lately
come to lodge in this attic--which had been vacant for three years
--was committing suicide. She ran upstairs, broke in the door by a
push with her peasant strength, and found the lodger writhing on a
camp-bed in the convulsions of death. She extinguished the brazier;
the door was open, the air rushed in, and the exile was saved. Then,
when Lisbeth had put him to bed like a patient, and he was asleep,
she could detect the motives of his suicide in the destitution of the
rooms, where there was nothing whatever but a wretched table, the
camp-bed, and two chairs.

On the table lay a document, which she read:

"I am Count Wenceslas Steinbock, born at Prelia, in Livonia.

"No one is to be accused of my death; my reasons for killing
myself are, in the words of Kosciusko, _Finis Polonioe_!

"The grand-nephew of a valiant General under Charles XII. could
not beg. My weakly constitution forbids my taking military
service, and I yesterday saw the last of the hundred thalers which
I had brought with me from Dresden to Paris. I have left
twenty-five francs in the drawer of this table to pay the rent I owe
to the landlord.

"My parents being dead, my death will affect nobody. I desire that
my countrymen will not blame the French Government. I have never
registered myself as a refugee, and I have asked for nothing; I
have met none of my fellow-exiles; no one in Paris knows of my
existence.

"I am dying in Christian beliefs. May God forgive the last of the
Steinbocks!

"WENCESLAS."

Mademoiselle Fischer, deeply touched by the dying man's honesty,
opened the drawer and found the five five-franc pieces to pay his
rent.

"Poor young man!" cried she. "And with no one in the world to care
about him!"

She went downstairs to fetch her work, and sat stitching in the
garret, watching over the Livonian gentleman.

When he awoke his astonishment may be imagined on finding a woman
sitting by his bed; it was like the prolongation of a dream. As she
sat there, covering aiguillettes with gold thread, the old maid had
resolved to take charge of the poor youth whom she admired as he lay
slee