incomprehensible still is a woman's love! Ah, pardon me; I must leave
you. I see in the procession a poor woman known to me in better days."

De Mauleon walked towards the woman he spoke of--one of the long
procession to the bakery--a child clinging to her robe. A pale grief-
worn woman, still young, but with the weariness of age on her face, and
the shadow of death on her child's.

"I think I see Madame Monnier," said De Mauleon, softly.

She turned and looked at him drearily. A year ago, she would have
blushed if addressed by a stranger in a name not lawfully hers.

"Well," she said, in hollow accents broken by cough; "I don't know you,
Monsieur."

"Poor woman!" he resumed, walking beside her as she moved slowly on,
while the eyes of other women in the procession stared at him hungrily.
"And your child looks ill too. It is your youngest?"

"My only one! The others are in Pere la Chaise. There are but few
children alive in my street now. God has been very merciful, and taken
them to Himself."

De Mauleon recalled the scene of a neat comfortable apartment, and the
healthful happy children at play on the floor. The mortality among the
little ones, especially in the quartier occupied by the working classes,
had of late been terrible. The want of food, of fuel, the intense
severity of the weather, had swept them off as by a pestilence.