ld, seemed to have been left in the world expressly
as a specimen of hungry misery. Blind, gouty, almost deaf, she lived alone
in a garret; but a gayety, stronger than misfortune and illness, sustained
her at eighty years of age, and made her still love life. Her neighbors
never passed her door without going in to see her, and the antiquated
tunes she hummed enlivened all the girls of the neighborhood. She
possessed a little annuity which sufficed to maintain her; as long as day
lasted, she knitted. She did not know what had happened since the death of
Louis XIV.

It was to this worthy person that Julie had herself privately conducted.
She donned for the occasion all her finery; feathers, laces, ribbons,
diamonds, nothing was spared. She wanted to be fascinating; but the real
secret of her beauty, in this case, was the whim that was carrying her
away. She went up the steep, dark staircase which led to the good lady's
chamber, and, after the most graceful bow, spoke somewhat as follows:

"You have, madame, a nephew, called Croisilles, who loves me and has asked
for my hand; I love him too and wish to marry him; but my father, Monsieur
Godeau, fermier-general of this town, refuses his consent, because your
nephew is not rich. I would not, for the world, give occasion to scandal,
nor cause trouble to anybody; I would therefore never think of disposing
of myself without the consent of my family. I come to ask you a favor,
which I beseech you to grant me. You must come yourself and propose this
marriage to my father. I have, thank God, a little fortune which is quite
at your disposal; you may take possession, whenever you see fit, of five
hundred thousand francs at my notary's. You will say that this sum belongs
to your nephew, which in fact it does. It is not a present that I am
making him, it is a debt which I am paying, for I am the cause of the ruin
of Croisilles, and it is but just that I should repair it. My father will
not easily give in; you will be obliged to insist and you must have a
little courage; I, for my part, will not fail. As nobody on earth
excepting myself has any right to the sum of which I am speaking to you,
nobody will ever know in what way this amount will have passed into your
hands. You are not very rich yourself, I know, and you may fear that
people will be astonished to see you thus endowing your nephew; but
remember that my father does not know you, that you show yourself very
little in town, an