s writing
to do in the evenings. Poor fellow, he works so hard! Well!" with a
sigh, "I don't think that he will be back to-day. The children will eat
his beefsteak, that's all; it won't do them any harm."

As she spoke, she took some pieces of meat from an almost empty
cupboard, and placed them on the table, excusing herself for doing so
before Zilah.

And he contemplated, with an emotion which every word of the little
woman increased, this poor, miserable apartment, where the wife lived,
taking care of her children, while the husband, Monsieur Puck or
Monsieur Gavroche, paraded at the fancy fairs or at the theatres;
figured at the races; tasted the Baroness Dinati's wines, caring only
for Johannisberg with the blue and gold seal of 1862; and gave to Potel
and Chabot, in his articles, lessons in gastronomy.

Then Madame Jacquemin, feeling instinctively that she had the sympathy
of this sad-faced man who spoke to her in such a gentle voice, related
her life to him with the easy confidence which poor people, who never
see the great world, possess. She told him, with a tender smile, the
entirely Parisian idyl of the love of the working-girl for the little
clerk who loved her so much and who married her; and of the excursions
they used to take together to Saint-Germain, going third-class, and
eating their dinner upon the green grass under the trees, and then
enjoying the funny doings of the painted clowns, the illuminations, the
music, and the dancing. Oh! they danced and danced and danced, until
she was so tired that she slept all the way home with her head on his
shoulder, dreaming of the happy day they had had.

"That was the best time of my life, Monsieur. We were no richer than
we are now; but we were more free. He was with me more, too: now, he
certainly makes me very proud with his beautiful articles; but I don't
see him; I don't see him any more, and it makes me very sad. Oh! if it
were not for that, although we are not millionaires, I should be very
happy; yes, entirely, entirely happy."

There was, in the simple, gentle resignation of this poor girl,
sacrificed without knowing it, such devoted love for the man who,
in reality, abandoned her, that Prince Andras felt deeply moved and
touched. He thought of the one leading a life of pleasure, and the other
a life of fatigue; of this household touching on one side poverty, and,
on the other, wealth and fashion; and he divined, from the innocent
words of this you