they placed
me with----!"

"They sent you to sleep, no doubt?"

"Ah! that is it" cried poor Lydie. "A little more strength and I
should be at home. I feel that I am dropping, and my brain is not quite
clear.--Just now I fancied I was in a garden----"

Corentin took Lydie in his arms, and she lost consciousness; he carried
her upstairs.

"Katt!" he called.

Katt came out with exclamations of joy.

"Don't be in too great a hurry to be glad!" said Corentin gravely; "the
girl is very ill."

When Lydie was laid on her bed and recognized her own room by the light
of two candles that Katt lighted, she became delirious. She sang scraps
of pretty airs, broken by vociferations of horrible sentences she had
heard. Her pretty face was mottled with purple patches. She mixed up
the reminiscences of her pure childhood with those of these ten days
of infamy. Katt sat weeping; Corentin paced the room, stopping now and
again to gaze at Lydie.

"She is paying her father's debt," said he. "Is there a Providence
above? Oh, I was wise not to have a family. On my word of honor, a child
is indeed a hostage given to misfortune, as some philosopher has said."

"Oh!" cried the poor child, sitting up in bed and throwing back her fine
long hair, "instead of lying here, Katt, I ought to be stretched in the
sand at the bottom of the Seine!"

"Katt, instead of crying and looking at your child, which will never
cure her, you ought to go for a doctor; the medical officer in the first
instance, and then Monsieur Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon----We must
save this innocent creature."

And Corentin wrote down the addresses of these two famous physicians.

At this moment, up the stairs came some one to whom they were familiar,
and the door was opened. Peyrade, in a violent sweat, his face purple,
his eyes almost blood-stained, and gasping like a dolphin, rushed from
the outer door to Lydie's room, exclaiming:

"Where is my child?"

He saw a melancholy sign from Corentin, and his eyes followed his
friend's hand. Lydie's condition can only be compared to that of a
flower tenderly cherished by a gardener, now fallen from its stem, and
crushed by the iron-clamped shoes of some peasant. Ascribe this simile
to a father's heart, and you will understand the blow that fell on
Peyrade; the tears started to his eyes.

"You are crying!--It is my father!" said the girl.

She could still recognize her father; she got out of bed and fell on her
knees