than about the abstract
ideas which they represent.

"One day, however, her mother, who had virtually made a servant of her,
had a praiseworthy inspiration. Finding that she had some money, she
dressed her anew from head to foot, bought her a kind of outfit, and
bound her as an apprentice to a dressmaker.

"But it came too late.

"Every kind of restraint was naturally intolerable to such a vagabond
nature. The order and the regularity of the house in which she lived
were a horror to her. To sit still all day long, a needle in her hand,
appeared to her harder than death itself. The very comforts around her
embarrassed her, and she felt as a savage would feel in tight boots. At
the end of the first week, therefore, she ran away from the dressmaker,
stealing a hundred francs. As long as these lasted, she roved over
Paris. When they were spent, and she was hungry, she came back to her
mother.

"But her mother had moved away, and no one knew what had become of her.
She was inquired after, but never found. Any other person would have
been in despair. Not she. The same day she entered as waiter in a
cheap coffee-house. Turned out there, she found employment in a low
restaurant, where she had to wash up the dishes and plates. Sent away
here, also, she became a servant in two or three other places of still
lower character; then, at last, utterly disgusted, she determined to do
nothing at all.

"She was sinking into the gutter, she was on the point of being lost
before she had reached womanhood, like fruit which spoils before it is
ripe, when a man turned up who was fated to arm her for life's Struggle,
and to change the vulgar thief into the accomplished monster of
perversity whom you know."

Here Papa Ravinet suddenly paused, and, looking at Daniel, said,--

"You must not believe, M. Champcey, that these details are imaginary.
I have spent five years of my life in tracing out Sarah's early
life,--five years, during which I have been going from door to door,
ever in search of information. A dealer in second-hand goods enters
everywhere without exciting suspicion. And then I have witnesses to
prove everything I have told you so far,--witnesses whom I shall summon,
and who will speak whenever the necessity arises to establish the
identity of the Countess Sarah."

Daniel made no reply.

Like Henrietta, even like Mrs. Bertolle, at this moment he was
completely fascinated by the old gentleman's manner and tone. The
latte