t twenty years of age he had fallen in love with a
young girl of sixteen, Hubertine, and so deep was their affection for
each other, that when her mother, widow of a magistrate, refused to give
her consent to their union, they ran away together and were married. She
was remarkably beautiful, and that was their whole romance, their joy,
and their misfortune.

When, a year later, she went to the deathbed of her mother, the latter
disinherited her and gave her her curse. So affected was she by the
terrible scene, that her infant, born soon after, died, and since then
it seemed as if, even in her coffin in the cemetery, the willful
woman had never pardoned her daughter, for it was, alas! a childless
household. After twenty-four years they still mourned the little one
they had lost.

Disturbed by their looks, the stranger tried to hide herself behind the
pillar of Saint Agnes. She was also annoyed by the movement which now
commenced in the street, as the shops were being opened and people began
to go out. The Rue des Orfevres, which terminates at the side front of
the church, would be almost impassable, blocked in as it is on one side
by the house of the Huberts, if the Rue du Soleil, a narrow lane, did
not relieve it on the other side by running the whole length of the
Cathedral to the great front on the Place du Cloitre. At this hour there
were few passers, excepting one or two persons who were on their way to
early service, and they looked with surprise at the poor little girl,
whom they did not recognise as ever having seen at Beaumont. The slow,
persistent fall of snow continued. The cold seemed to increase with the
wan daylight, and in the dull thickness of the great white shroud which
covered the town one heard, as if from a distance, the sound of voices.
But timid, ashamed of her abandonment, as if it were a fault, the
child drew still farther back, when suddenly she recognised before her
Hubertine, who, having no servant, had gone out to buy bread.

"What are you doing there, little one? Who are you?"

She did not answer, but hid her face. Then she was no longer conscious
of suffering; her whole being seemed to have faded away, as if her
heart, turned to ice, had stopped beating. When the good lady turned
away with a pitying look, she sank down upon her knees completely
exhausted, and slipped listlessly into the snow, whose flakes quickly
covered her.

And the woman, as she returned with her fresh rolls, seeing