ame and age and writes busily for quarter of
an hour, covering ten or more sheets of paper with a religious figure at
the head. At last, everything is ready, and I embrace her. A boy takes
one arm, the housekeeper the other.--After that, I saw nothing more.

_Thursday, August 14._--We have been to Lariboisiere. We found Rose
quiet, hopeful, talking of her approaching discharge--in three weeks at
most,--and so free from all thought of death that she told us of a
furious love scene that took place yesterday between a woman in the bed
next hers and a brother of the Christian schools, who was there again
to-day. Poor Rose is death, but death engrossed with life. Near her bed
was a young woman, whose husband, a mechanic, had come to see her. "You
see, as soon as I can walk, I shall walk about the garden so much that
they'll have to send me home!" she said. And the mother in her added:
"Does the child ask for me sometimes?"

"Sometimes, oh! yes," the man replied.

_Saturday, August 16._--This morning, at ten o'clock, someone rings the
bell. I hear a colloquy at the door between the housekeeper and the
concierge. The door opens, the concierge enters with a letter. I take
the letter; it bears the stamp of Lariboisiere. Rose died this morning
at seven o'clock.

Poor girl! So it is all over! I knew that she was doomed; but she was so
animated, so cheerful, almost happy, when we saw her Thursday! And here
we are both walking up and down the salon, filled with the thought that
a fellow-creature's death inspires: We shall never see her again!--an
instinctive thought that recurs incessantly within you. What a void!
what a gap in our household! A habit, an attachment of twenty-five years
growth, a girl who knew our whole lives and opened our letters in our
absence, and to whom we told all our business. When I was a bit of a boy
I trundled my hoop with her, and she bought me apple-tarts with her own
money, when we went to walk. She would sit up for Edmond till morning,
to open the door for him, when he went to the Bal de l'Opera without our
mother's knowledge. She was the woman, the excellent nurse, whose hands
mother placed in ours when she was dying. She had the keys to
everything, she managed everything, she did everything for our comfort.
For twenty-five years she tucked us up in bed every night, and every
night there were the same never-ending jokes about her ugliness and her
disgraceful physique. Sorrows and joys alike she sha