ime, I
repaired to the house of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, clambered up the
stairs, and knocked at the door I had such good cause to remember. The
door was opened by a workman, and a rapid glance at the inside of the
room showed me that he was a lastmaker. 'Mademoiselle Clementine?' I
asked. The man stared at me, and said, 'No such person lives here.' I
made inquiries on all the lower floors--nobody had ever heard of her.
Clementine had disappeared. I never saw her again until a few days ago,
when I walked by your side behind the body of Cortot. I should not have
recognized her but for the bronze Christ she carried under her arm, and
which attracted my notice. If what I surmise be correct, she must have
reached the last stage of misery; for I feel convinced that nothing but
absolute want would make her part with it. I have, however, failed to
trace it in any of the bric-a-brac shops on the quays, and I believe
that I have pretty well inquired at every one; so I must fain be content
until fate throws her again across my path."

So far the story as told by the great sculptor himself. During the next
eight years, in fact up to the Coup d'Etat, I met him frequently, and,
curiously enough, rarely failed to inquire whether in his many
wanderings through Paris he had caught a glimpse of his former model. I
felt unaccountably interested in the fate of that woman whom I had never
seen, and, if we had been able to find her, would have endeavoured to
find a decent home for her. But for about three years my inquiries
always met with the same answer. Then, one evening in the latter end of
'46 or beginning of '47, David told me that he had met her on the outer
boulevards, arm in arm with one of those terrible nondescripts of which
one is often compelled to speak again and again, and which, as far as I
am aware, are nowhere to be found as a class except in the French
metropolis and great provincial centres. Clementine evidently wished to
avoid David. A little while after, he met her again, and this time
followed her, but, though by no means a coward, lacked the courage to
enter the hovel into which she had disappeared with her companion. The
last time he saw her was in the middle of '47, in the Rue des
Boucheries. She seemed to have returned to her old quarters, and she was
by herself. Until she spoke, David did not recognize her. Her face was
positively seamed with horrible scars, "wounds inflicted by her
lovers"--Heaven save the ma