with a large family.
After two months, hearing nothing of my mother, they wrote to
her: she made no answer. They then went to Paris, and called at
the address she had given them. She had just moved out; and no one
knew what had become of her. They could no longer, therefore,
expect a single sou for the cares they would bestow upon me. They
kept me, nevertheless, thinking that one child the more would not
make much difference. I know nothing of my parents, therefore,
except what I heard through these kind gardeners; and, as I was
still quite young when I had the misfortune to lose them, I have
but a very vague remembrance of what they told me. I remember very
well, however, that according to their statements, my mother was a
young working-woman of rare beauty, and that, very likely, she was
not my father's wife. If I was ever told the name of my mother or
my father, if I ever knew it, I have quite forgotten it. I had
myself no name. My adopted parents called me the Parisian. I was
happy, nevertheless, with these kind people, and treated exactly
like their own children. In winter, they sent me to school; in
summer, I helped weeding the garden. I drove a sheep or two along
the road, or else I went to gather violets and strawberries
through the woods.

"This was the happiest, indeed, the only happy time of my life,
towards which my thoughts may turn when I feel despair and
discouragement getting the better of me. Alas! I was but eight,
when, within the same week, the gardener and his wife were both
carried off by the same disease,--inflammation of the lungs.

"On a freezing December morning, in that house upon which the hand
of death had just fallen, we found ourselves, six children, the
oldest of whom was not eleven, crying with grief, fright, cold,
and hunger.

"Neither the gardener nor his wife had any relatives; and they
left nothing but a few wretched pieces of furniture, the sale of
which barely sufficed to pay the expenses of their funeral. The
two younger children were taken to an asylum: the others were taken
charge of by the neighbors.

"It was a laundress of Marly who took me. I was quite tall and
strong for my age. She made an apprentice of me. She was not
unkind by nature; but she was violent and brutal in the extreme.
She compelled me to do an excessive amount of work, and often of a
kind above my strength.

"Fifty times a day, I had to go from the river to the house,
carrying on my