been eleven consecutive
days to the hotel de Brambourg, rue de Clichy, without getting any
help from my husband. The poverty in which I now am prevents my
employing a lawyer to make a legal demand for what is due to me,
that I may die with decency. Nothing can save me, I know that. In
case you are unwilling to see your unhappy sister-in-law, send me,
at least, the money to end my days. Your brother desires my death;
he has always desired it. He warned me that he knew three ways of
killing a woman, but I had not the sense to foresee the one he has
employed.

In case you will consent to relieve me, and judge for yourself the
misery in which I now am, I live in the rue du Houssay, at the
corner of the rue Chantereine, on the fifth floor. If I cannot pay
my rent to-morrow I shall be put out--and then, where can I go?
May I call myself,

Your sister-in-law,

Comtesse Flore de Brambourg.

"What a pit of infamy!" cried Joseph; "there is something under it
all."

"Let us send for the woman who brought the letter; we may get the
preface of the story," said Bixiou.

The woman presently appeared, looking, as Bixiou observed, like
perambulating rags. She was, in fact, a mass of old gowns, one on top
of another, fringed with mud on account of the weather, the whole
mounted on two thick legs with heavy feet which were ill-covered by
ragged stockings and shoes from whose cracks the water oozed upon the
floor. Above the mound of rags rose a head like those that Charlet has
given to his scavenger-women, caparisoned with a filthy bandanna
handkerchief slit in the folds.

"What is your name?" said Joseph, while Bixiou sketched her, leaning
on an umbrella belonging to the year II. of the Republic.

"Madame Gruget, at your service. I've seen better days, my young
gentleman," she said to Bixiou, whose laugh affronted her. "If my poor
girl hadn't had the ill-luck to love some one too much, you wouldn't
see me what I am. She drowned herself in the river, my poor Ida,
--saving your presence! I've had the folly to nurse up a quaterne, and
that's why, at seventy-seven years of age, I'm obliged to take care of
sick folks for ten sous a day, and go--"

"--without clothes?" said Bixiou. "My grandmother nursed up a trey,
but she dressed herself properly."

"Out of my ten sous I have to pay for a lodging--"

"What's the matter with the lady you are nursing?"

"In the first place, she hasn't got any mo