alides:--

"She was wrenched from me there by the fatal curiosity of that world
which excites itself and meddles solely for excitement and occupation."

Twelve miles from where they were, on the banks of the Seine, in a
modest village lying on the slope of a hill of that long hilly basin the
middle of which great Paris stirs like a child in its cradle, a death
scene was taking place, far indeed removed from Parisian pomps, with no
accompaniment of torches or tapers or mourning-coaches, without prayers
of the Church, in short, a death in all simplicity. Here are the facts:
The body of a young girl was found early in the morning, stranded on the
river-bank in the slime and reeds of the Seine. Men employed in dredging
sand saw it as they were getting into their frail boat on their way to
their work.

"_Tiens_! fifty francs earned!" said one of them.

"True," said the other.

They approached the body.

"A handsome girl! We had better go and make our statement."

And the two dredgers, after covering the body with their jackets, went
to the house of the village mayor, who was much embarrassed at having to
make out the legal papers necessitated by this discovery.

The news of this event spread with the telegraphic rapidity peculiar to
regions where social communications have no distractions, where gossip,
scandal, calumny, in short, the social tale which feasts the world
has no break of continuity from one boundary to another. Before
long, persons arriving at the mayor's office released him from all
embarrassment. They were able to convert the _proces-verbal_ into a mere
certificate of death, by recognizing the body as that of the Demoiselle
Ida Gruget, corset-maker, living rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, number
14. The judiciary police of Paris arrived, and the mother, bearing her
daughter's last letter. Amid the mother's moans, a doctor certified
to death by asphyxia, through the injection of black blood into the
pulmonary system,--which settled the matter. The inquest over, and the
certificates signed, by six o'clock the same evening authority was given
to bury the grisette. The rector of the parish, however, refused to
receive her into the church or to pray for her. Ida Gruget was
therefore wrapped in a shroud by an old peasant-woman, put into a common
pine-coffin, and carried to the village cemetery by four men, followed
by a few inquisitive peasant-women, who talked about the death with
wonder mingled with some pi