We know, from Suzanne and Françoise, without this manuscript, that there
was an Alix Carpentier, daughter of a count, widow of a viscount, an
_emigrée_ of the Revolution, married to a Norman peasant, known to M.
Gerbeau, beloved of Suzanne and Françoise, with whom they journeyed to
Attakapas, and who wrote for them the history of her strange life. I hold
a manuscript carefully kept by at least two generations of Françoise's
descendants among their valuable private papers. It professes to be that
history--a short, modest, unadorned narrative, apparently a copy of a
paper of like compass, notwithstanding the evident insertion of two
impossible statements whose complete omission does not disturb the
narrative. I see no room to doubt that it contains the true story of a
real and lovely woman. But to come back to my attorney.

While his grave negotiations were still going on, there met me one evening
at my own gate a lady in black, seeking advice concerning her wish to sell
to some publisher a private diary never intended for publication.

"That kind is the best," I said. "Did you write it during the late war?" I
added at a guess.

"Yes."

"I suppose, then, it contains a careful record of each day's public
events."

"No, I'm sorry to say--"

"Nay, don't be sorry; that lack may save it from the waste-basket." Then
my heart spoke. "Ah! madam, if you had only done what no woman seems to
have seen the importance of doing--written the women's side of that awful