n without anything, absolutely without
anything.

He told her all this while he was half asleep, amidst sobs and yawns, so
that the girl did not venture to ask him any more questions, in spite of
her curiosity, but, on the contrary, cut him short, and undressed him
while she listened, and only interrupted him to kiss him, and to say to
him: "There, there, my poor child! You shall tell me the rest to-morrow.
You cannot go on now, so go to bed and have a good sleep." And as soon
as he had finished, she put him to bed, where he immediately fell into a
profound sleep. Then she undressed herself quickly, got into bed by his
side, so she might keep him warm, and went to sleep, crying to herself,
without exactly knowing why.

The next day they breakfasted and dined together at a common eating
house, on money that she had borrowed, and when it was dark, she said to
the child: "Wait for me here; I will come for you at closing time." She
came back sooner, however about ten o'clock. She had twelve francs,
which she gave him, telling him that she had _earned them_, and she
continued, with a laugh: "I feel that I shall make some more. I am in
luck this evening, and you have brought it me. Do not be impatient, but
have some milk-posset while you are waiting for me."

She kissed him before she went, and the kind girl felt real maternal
happiness as she went out. An hour later, however, she was _run in_ by
the police for having been found in a prohibited place, and off she
went, game for _St. Lazare_[8].

[Footnote 8: Prison in Paris.]

And the child, who was turned out by the proprietor at closing time, and
then driven from the furnished lodgings the next morning, where they
told him that _Tall Fanny was in quod_, began his wretched vagabond life
in the streets again, with only the twelve francs to depend on.

* * * * *

Fifteen years afterwards the newspapers announced one morning that the
famous Fanny Clairet, the celebrated _horizontal_, whose caprices had
caused a revolution in high life, that queen of frail beauties for whom
three men had committed suicide, and so many others had ruined
themselves, that incomparable living statue, who had attracted all Paris
to the theater where she impersonated Venus in her transparent skin
tights, made of woven air and knitted nothing had been shut up in a
lunatic asylum. She had been seized suddenly; it was an attack of general
paralysis, and as her debts