r arm,
showed a deep cut, from which the blood still oozed.

"Good. She has no one," said the man, withdrawing the light.

This, as all the world knows, was in 1871. Four years afterwards, at the
time my story begins, Marie Didier still occupied that attic. She lived
by taking in needlework, and it was sometimes a wonder to the few who
knew her, that working so hard as she did, she should remain so poor.
The furniture of her attic I have described, the sole addition she had
made to it was the gay chintz which curtained off the alcove with the
bed. She was always ready to do a kindness, but made no acquaintances,
and the only persons who ever climbed to her attic were Plon, who made
occasional weighty visitations, often discoursed upon his prowess at the
time of the Commune; and an idiot girl called Perine, whom Marie one day
found crying in the street; she had no father or mother, and the old
rag-picker she lived with beat her. Once or twice Marie gave her food,
and the poor creature attached herself to her like a dog, followed her
upstairs and lay across her door. After a while Madame Didier admitted
her into her room at times, and let her share her poor meals, and sleep
on a heap of sacking outside the door. Perine, in such prosperity, was
as happy as a queen. It is true that Plon at first objected, but Marie
could persuade him into anything, and he only grumbled.

On one winter day, Marie was stooping over the stove stirring something
in an earthen pipkin; Perine, seated on the wooden stool, leaned forward
and watched her operations with excessive interest. Perhaps for want of
an intelligent companion, Madame Didier was in the habit of
soliloquising aloud, and at this moment she was saying cheerfully:

"Not much, to be sure, but something! I should have liked a carrot or
two, but in these hard times that would have been extravagant. And,
after all, there is some credit in making good soup out of nothing at
all. If one could run here and there in the market--'A pound of your
best veal, monsieur'--'A bunch of those fine turnips, and a stick of
celery, madame'--well, truth obliges me to admit that it is possible
the soup would have a finer flavour, but there would not be the
satisfaction of seeing it grow out of a few onions a crust of bread, and
a pinch of salt. And that is a satisfaction which I am favoured with
tolerably often. Well, Perine, my child, it interests you--this
occupation--does it not? Do you think yo