francs. The creditors divided among them two thirds, and the
family, a sister and a grand-nephew, received the remainder.

The sister opened her eyes very wide when the lawyer wrote to her
that she had inherited 50,000 francs. The girl had not seen her
sister for six or seven years, and did not know what had become
of her from the moment when she had disappeared from home. She
came up to Paris in haste, and great was the astonishment of
those who had known Marguerite when they saw as her only heir a
fine, fat country girl, who until then had never left her
village. She had made the fortune at a single stroke, without
even knowing the source of that fortune. She went back, I heard
afterward, to her countryside, greatly saddened by her sister's
death, but with a sadness which was somewhat lightened by the
investment at four and a half per cent which she had been able to
make.

All these circumstances, often repeated in Paris, the mother city
of scandal, had begun to be forgotten, and I was even little by
little forgetting the part I had taken in them, when a new
incident brought to my knowledge the whole of Marguerite's life,
and acquainted me with such pathetic details that I was taken
with the idea of writing down the story which I now write.

The rooms, now emptied of all their furniture, had been to let
for three or four days when one morning there was a ring at my
door.

My servant, or, rather, my porter, who acted as my servant, went
to the door and brought me a card, saying that the person who had