la
Garde. A concise history of certain events in the cashier's past life
must be given in order to explain these facts, and to give a complete
presentment of the crisis when he yielded to temptation.

Mme. de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese. No one, not even
Castanier, knew her real name. She was one of those young girls, who
are driven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear of
starvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe, many
regard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the laws
of their constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of prostitution in
Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the Madonna, had
met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too rough and homely to make his
way in society, and he was tired of tramping the boulevard at night and
of the kind of conquests made there by gold. For some time past he had
desired to bring a certain regularity into an irregular life. He was
struck by the beauty of the poor child who had drifted by chance into
his arms, and his determination to rescue her from the life of the
streets was half benevolent, half selfish, as some of the thoughts of
the best of men are apt to be. Social conditions mingle elements of evil
with the promptings of natural goodness of heart, and the mixture
of motives underlying a man's intentions should be leniently judged.
Castanier had just cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his own
interests were concerned. So he concluded to be a philanthropist on
either count, and at first made her his mistress.

"Hey! hey!" he said to himself, in his soldierly fashion. "I am an
old wolf, and a sheep shall not make a fool of me. Castanier, old man,
before you set up housekeeping, reconnoitre the girl's character for a
bit, and see if she is a steady sort."

This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearly
approaching respectability among those which the world declines to
recognize. During the first year she took the _nom de guerre_ of
Aquilina, one of the characters in _Venice Preserved_ which she had
chanced to read. She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face
and general appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brain of
which she was conscious. When Castanier found that her life was as
well regulated and virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, he
manifested a desire that they should live as husband and wife. So she
took the nam