deserves death for having killed such a noble beast."

"Ah! thank you, monsieur! Thank you very much!"

Having established this happy entente, Inspector Loup and Fouchette
entered into a long and interesting conversation,--interesting
especially to the chief of the Secret System.

When the interview was over Fouchette was led away almost quite happy.
Happier, at least, than she had ever been,--far happier than she had
ever hoped to be. First, she had been promised her revenge; second,
she was neither to go back to the Rendez-Vous pour Cochers nor to be
turned into the street; third, she was to be sent to a beautiful
retreat outside of Paris, where she would be taught to read and write
and be brought up as a lady.

It seemed to the child that this was too good to be true. The
country, in her imagination, was the source and foundation of all real
happiness. There was nothing in cities,--nothing but dust and crowds,
and human selfishness and universal hardness of heart, and toil and
misery.

In the country was freedom and independence. She had tasted it in her
furtive morning excursions in the wood of Vincennes. Tartar had loved
the country. The woods, the fields, and the flowers,--to range among
them daily, openly and without fear, would be heaven!

To the Parisian all outside of Paris is country.

And to learn to read and to write and understand the newspapers and
what was in books!

Yes, it seemed really too much, all at once. For of all other things
coveted in this world, Fouchette deemed such a knowledge most
desirable. Up to this moment it had been beyond the ordinary flight of
her youthful imagination. It was one of the impossibilities,--like
flying and finding a million of money. But now it had come to her. She
might know something she had never seen, or of which she had never
heard.

To accomplish all of this and to be in the country at the same time,
what more could anybody wish?

Yet she was to have more. The inspector,--what was this wonderful man,
anyhow, who knew everything and could do anything?--he, the inspector,
had promised it. She was to have human kindness and love!

The inspector was a nice gentleman. And the agents,--it was all a lie
about the agents de police. They were all nice men. She had hated and
dreaded them; and had they not been good to her? Had they not taken
her from the river and fed her and clothed her and visited with swift
punishment those who had cruelly abused her?

F