eariness.

"My poor niece went out of her mind," the doctor added after a brief
pause. "Ah! monsieur," he went on, grasping M. d'Albon's hand, "what
a fearful life for a poor little thing, so young, so delicate! An
unheard-of misfortune separated her from that grenadier of the Garde
(Fleuriot by name), and for two years she was dragged on after the army,
the laughing-stock of a rabble of outcasts. She went barefoot, I
heard, ill-clad, neglected, and starved for months at a time; sometimes
confined to a hospital, sometimes living like a hunted animal. God alone
knows all the misery which she endured, and yet she lives. She was shut
up in a madhouse in a little German town, while her relations, believing
her to be dead, were dividing her property here in France.

"In 1816 the grenadier Fleuriot recognized her in an inn in Strasbourg.
She had just managed to escape from captivity. Some peasants told him
that the Countess had lived for a whole month in a forest, and how that
they had tracked her and tried to catch her without success.

"I was at that time not many leagues from Strasbourg; and hearing the
talk about the girl in the wood, I wished to verify the strange facts
that had given rise to absurd stories. What was my feeling when I beheld
the Countess? Fleuriot told me all that he knew of the piteous story.
I took the poor fellow with my niece into Auvergne, and there I had the
misfortune to lose him. He had some ascendancy over Mme. de Vandieres.
He alone succeeded in persuading her to wear clothes; and in those days
her one word of human speech--_Farewell_--she seldom uttered. Fleuriot
set himself to the task of awakening certain associations; but there
he failed completely; he drew that one sorrowful word from her a little
more frequently, that was all. But the old grenadier could amuse her,
and devoted himself to playing with her, and through him I hoped; but--"
here Stephanie's uncle broke off. After a moment he went on again.

"Here she has found another creature with whom she seems to have
an understanding--an idiot peasant girl, who once, in spite of her
plainness and imbecility, fell in love with a mason. The mason thought
of marrying her because she had a little bit of land, and for a whole
year poor Genevieve was the happiest of living creatures. She dressed in
her best, and danced on Sundays with Dallot; she understood love; there
was room for love in her heart and brain. But Dallot thought better of