to get thirty francs a month.

"The place might have been a good one. There were only three in
the family,--the gentleman and his wife, and a son of twenty-five.
Every morning, father and son left for Paris by the first train,
and only came home to dinner at about six o'clock. I was therefore
alone all day with the woman. Unfortunately, she was a cross and
disagreeable person, who, never having had a servant before, felt
an insatiable desire of showing and exercising her authority. She
was, moreover, extremely suspicious, and found some pretext to visit
regularly my trunks once or twice a week, to see if I had not
concealed some of her napkins or silver spoons. Having told her
that I had once been a laundress, she made me wash and iron all the
clothes in the house, and was forever accusing me of using too much
soap and too much coal. Still I liked the place well enough; and I
had a little room in the attic; which I thought charming, and where
I spent delightful evenings reading or sewing.

"But luck was against me. The young gentleman of the house took a
fancy to me, and determined to make me his mistress. I discouraged
him in a way; but he persisted in his loathsome attention, until one
night he broke into my room, and I was compelled to shout for help
with all my might, before I could get rid of him.

"The next day I left that house; but I tried in vain to find another
situation in Bougival. I resolved then to seek a place in Paris.
I had a big trunk full of good clothes, and about a hundred francs
of savings; and I felt no anxiety.

"When I arrived in Paris, I went straight to an intelligence-office.
I was extremely well received by a very affable old woman who
promised to get me a good place, and, in the mean time, solicited
me to board with her. She kept a sort of boarding-house for servants
out of place; and there were there some fifty or sixty of us, who
slept at night in long dormitories.

"Time went by, and still I did not find that famous place. The
board was expensive, too, for my scanty means; and I determined to
leave. I started in quest of new lodgings, followed by a porter,
carrying my trunk; but as I was crossing the Boulevard, not getting
quick enough out of the way of a handsome private carriage which
was coming at full trot, I was knocked down, and trampled under the
horses's feet."

Without allowing Maxence to interrupt her,

"I had lost consciousness," went on Mlle. Lucienne. "