boldly the strange man plunged into the dark room; and almost
instantly the noise of breaking glass was heard. A moment later, and the
air in the room had become once more fit for breathing, and everybody
rushed in.

Alas! it was the death-rattle which M. Ravinet had heard.

On the bed, on a thin mattress, without blankets or bedclothes, lay a
young girl about twenty years old, dressed in a wretched black merino
dress, stretched out at full-length, stiff, lifeless.

The women sobbed aloud.

"To die so young!" they said over and over again, "and to die thus."

In the meantime the merchant had gone up to the bed, and examined the
poor girl.

"She is not dead yet!" he cried. "No, she cannot be dead! Come, ladies,
come here and help the poor child, till the doctor comes."

And then, with strange self-possession, he told them what to do for the
purpose of recalling her to life.

"Give her air," he said, "plenty of air; try to get some air into her
lungs. Cut open her dress; pour some vinegar on her face; rub her with
some woollen stuff."

He issued his orders, and they obeyed him readily, although they had no
hope of success.

"Poor child!" said one of the women. "No doubt she was crossed in love."

"Or she was starving," whispered another.

There was no doubt that poverty, extreme poverty, had ruled in that
miserable chamber: the traces were easily seen all around. The whole
furniture consisted of a bed, a chest of drawers, and two chairs. There
were no curtains at the window, no dresses in the trunk, not a ribbon
in the drawers. Evidently everything that could be sold had been sold,
piece by piece, little by little. The mattresses had followed the
dresses,--first the wool, handful by handful, then the covering.

Too proud to complain, and cut off from society by bashfulness, the poor
girl who was lying there had evidently gone through all the stages of
suffering which the shipwrecked mariner endures, who floats, resting on
a stray spar in the great ocean.

Papa Ravinet was thinking of all this, when a paper lying on the bureau
attracted his eye. He took it up. It was the last will of the poor girl,
and ran thus:--

"Let no one be accused; I die voluntarily. I beg Mrs. Chevassat will
carry the two letters which I enclose to their addresses. She will be
paid whatever I may owe her. Henrietta."

There were the two letters. On the first he read,--

Count Ville-Handry, Rue de Varennest 115. And, on the