time out of mind. All the sad
associations of the graveyard hang about the name. Here as in some other
parts of France, there is an old custom, dating from the times of the
Latin civilization, in virtue of which a woman takes her husband's name,
with the addition of a feminine termination, and this girl has been
called La Fosseuse, after her father.

"The laborer had married the waiting-woman of some countess or other
who owns an estate at a distance of a few leagues. It was a love-match.
Here, as in all country districts, love is a very small element in
a marriage. The peasant, as a rule, wants a wife who will bear him
children, a housewife who will make good soup and take it out to him in
the fields, who will spin and make his shirts and mend his clothes. Such
a thing had not happened for a long while in a district where a young
man not unfrequently leaves his betrothed for another girl who is richer
by three or four acres of land. The fate of Le Fosseur and his wife
was scarcely happy enough to induce our Dauphinois to forsake their
calculating habits and practical way of regarding things. La Fosseuse,
who was a very pretty woman, died when her daughter was born, and her
husband's grief for his loss was so great that he followed her within
the year, leaving nothing in the world to this little one except an
existence whose continuance was very doubtful--a mere feeble flicker of
a life. A charitable neighbor took the care of the baby upon herself,
and brought her up till she was nine years old. Then the burden of
supporting La Fosseuse became too heavy for the good woman; so at the
time of year when travelers are passing along the roads, she sent her
charge to beg for her living upon the highways.

"One day the little orphan asked for bread at the countess' chateau, and
they kept the child for her mother's sake. She was to be waiting-maid
some day to the daughter of the house, and was brought up to this end.
Her young mistress was married five years later; but meanwhile the poor
little thing was the victim of all the caprices of wealthy people, whose
beneficence for the most part is not to be depended upon even while
it lasts. They are generous by fits and starts--sometimes patrons,
sometimes friends, sometimes masters, in this way they falsify the
already false position of the poor children in whom they interest
themselves, and trifle with the hearts, the lives, and futures of their
protegees, whom they regard very l