s companion to its inmost recesses. This
woman, so energetic, so obstinate, was, as it were, broken down.
The springs of her will seemed worn out. She felt despondencies and
wearinesses until then unknown. Work tired her. She did not venture down
to the offices; she talked of giving up business, which was a bad sign.
She longed for country air. Were they not rich enough? With their simple
tastes so much money was unnecessary. In fact, they had no wants. They
would go to some pretty estate in the suburbs of Paris, live there and
plant cabbages. Why work? they had no children.

Michel agreed to these schemes. For a long time he had wished for
repose. Often he had feared that his wife's ambition would lead them too
far. But now, since she stopped of her own accord, it was all for the
best.

At this juncture their solicitor informed them that, near to their
works, the Cernay estate was to be put up for sale. Very often, when
going from Jouy to the mills, Madame Desvarennes had noticed the
chateau, the slate roofs of the turrets of which rose gracefully from a
mass of deep verdure. The Count de Cernay, the last representative of a
noble race, had just died of consumption, brought on by reckless living,
leaving nothing behind him but debts and a little girl two years old.
Her mother, an Italian singer and his mistress, had left him one morning
without troubling herself about the child. Everything was to be sold, by
order of the Court.

Some most lamentable incidents had saddened the Count's last hours. The
bailiffs had entered the house with the doctor when he came to pay his
last call, and the notices of the sale were all but posted up before the
funeral was over. Jeanne, the orphan, scared amid the troubles of this
wretched end, seeing unknown men walking into the reception-rooms with
their hats on, hearing strangers speaking loudly and with arrogance, had
taken refuge in the laundry. It was there that Madame Desvarennes found
her, playing, plainly dressed in a little alpaca frock, her pretty hair
loose and falling on her shoulders. She looked astonished at what she
had seen; silent, not daring to run or sing as formerly in the great
desolate house whence the master had just been taken away forever.

With the vague instinct of abandoned children who seek to attach
themselves to some one or some thing, Jeanne clung to Madame
Desvarennes, who, ready to protect, and longing for maternity, took the
child in her arms. The ga