nals to the effect that a French lady,
then staying in Coblentz, wished to adopt a female child not exceeding
the age of six: the child to be wholly resigned to her by the parents,
she undertaking to rear and provide for it as her own. I resolved to go
to Coblentz at once. I did so. I saw this lady. She seemed in affluent
circumstances, yet young, but a confirmed invalid, confined the greater
part of the day to her sofa by some malady of the spine. She told me
very frankly her story. She had been a professional dancer on the stage,
had married respectably, quitted the stage, become a widow, and shortly
afterwards been seized with the complaint that would probably for life
keep her a secluded prisoner in her room. Thus afflicted, and without
tie, interest, or object in the world, she conceived the idea of
adopting a child that she might bring up to tend and cherish her as a
daughter. In this, the imperative condition was that the child should
never be sought by the parents. She was pleased by my manner and
appearance: she did not wish her adopted daughter to be the child of
peasants. She asked me for no references,--made no inquiries. She
said cordially that she wished for no knowledge that, through any
indiscretion of her own, communicated to the child might lead her to
seek the discovery of her real parents. In fine, I left Coblentz on the
understanding that I was to bring the infant, and if it pleased Madame
Surville, the agreement was concluded.

"I then repaired to Aix. I saw the child. Alas! unnatural mother that I
was, the sight only more vividly brought before me the sense of my own
perilous position. Yet the child was lovely! a likeness of myself, but
lovelier far, for it was a pure, innocent, gentle loveliness. And they
told her to call me 'Maman.' Oh, did I not relent when I heard that
name? No; it jarred on my ear as a word of reproach and shame. In
walking with the infant towards the railway station, imagine my dismay
when suddenly I met the man who had been taught to believe me dead. I
soon discovered that his dismay was equal to my own,--that I had nothing
to fear from his desire to claim me. It did occur to me for a moment
to resign his child to him. But when he shrank reluctantly from a half
suggestion to that effect, my pride was wounded, my conscience absolved.
And, after all, it might be unsafe to my future to leave with him any
motive for tracing me. I left him hastily. I have never seen nor heard
of