her than the name of La Fleurette.

The vessel had been wrecked on the coast of France, on the very night
following its departure. The crew had barely escaped, but all the cargo
was lost.

Mademoiselle Godeau, at this news, no longer remembered that Croisilles
had made to her an avowal of his poverty; she was as heartbroken as though
a million had been at stake.

In an instant, the horrors of the tempest, the fury of the winds, the
cries of the drowning, the ruin of the man who loved her, presented
themselves to her mind like a scene in a romance. The bulletin and the
letter fell from her hands. She rose in great agitation, and, with heaving
breast and eyes brimming with tears, paced up and down, determined to act,
and asking herself how she should act.

There is one thing that must be said in justice to love; it is that the
stronger, the clearer, the simpler the considerations opposed to it, in a
word, the less common sense there is in the matter, the wilder does the
passion become and the more does the lover love. It is one of the most
beautiful things under heaven, this irrationality of the heart. We should
not be worth much without it. After having walked about the room (without
forgetting either her dear fan or the passing glance at the mirror), Julie
allowed herself to sink once more upon her lounge. Whoever had seen her at
this moment would have looked upon a lovely sight; her eyes sparkled, her
cheeks were on fire; she sighed deeply, and murmured in a delicious
transport of joy and pain:

"Poor fellow! He has ruined himself for me!"

Independently of the fortune which she could expect from her father,
Mademoiselle Godeau had in her own right the property her mother had left
her. She had never thought of it.

At this moment, for the first time in her life, she remembered that she
could dispose of five hundred thousand francs. This thought brought a
smile to her lips; a project, strange, bold, wholly feminine, almost as
mad as Croisilles himself, entered her head;--she weighed the idea in her
mind for some time, then decided to act upon it at once.

She began by inquiring whether Croisilles had any relatives or friends;
the maid was sent out in all directions to find out.

Having made minute inquiries in all quarters, she discovered, on the
fourth floor of an old rickety house, a half-crippled aunt, who never
stirred from her arm-chair, and had not been out for four or five years.
This poor woman, very o