or his former woes, drew him with her fair hands
safely into the upper regions. An inscription, in Gothic letters, was
then placed over the well:--

"L'amour m'a refaict
En 1525 tout-a-faict."

The fate of Agnes Hellebik was far preferable to that of another young
girl who lived in this quarter, indeed in the Rue Thibault-au-de.
Agnes du Rochier was the only daughter of one of the wealthiest
merchants of Paris, and was admired by all the neighbourhood for her
beauty and virtue. In 1403 her father died, leaving her the sole
possessor of his wealth, and rumour immediately disposed of her hand
to all the young gallants of the quarter; but whether it was that
grief for the loss of her parent had turned her head, or that the
gloomy fanaticism of that time had worked with too fatal effect on her
pure and inexperienced imagination, she took not only marriage and the
male sex into utter abomination, but resolved to quit the world for
ever, and to make herself a perpetual prisoner for religion's sake.
She determined, in short, to become what was then called a recluse,
and as such to pass the remainder of her days in a narrow cell built
within the wall of a church. On the 5th of October, accordingly, when
the cell, only a few feet square, was finished in the wall of the
church of St Opportune, Agnes entered her final abode, and the
ceremony of her reclusion began. The walls and pillars of the sacred
edifice had been hung with tapestry and costly cloths, tapers burned
on every altar, the clergy of the capital and the several religious
communities thronged the church. The Bishop of Paris, attended by his
chaplains and the canons of Notre Dame, entered the choir, and
celebrated a pontifical mass: he then approached the opening of the
cell, sprinkled it with holy water, and after the poor young thing had
bidden adieu to her friends and relations, ordered the masons to fill
up the aperture. This was done as strongly as stone and mortar could
make it; nor was any opening left, save only a small loophole through
which Agnes might hear the offices of the church, and receive the
aliments given her by the charitable. She was eighteen years old when
she entered this living tomb, and she continued within it _eighty_
years, till death terminated her sufferings! Alas, for mistaken piety!
Her wealth, which she gave to the church, and her own personal
exertions during so long a life, might have made her a blessing to all
that quarter