"But you do not know of our earlier life? It made some noise at the time; but that was a long while ago and you are so young!" "Stay!" said the countess. "I beg your pardon for my forgetfulness. Now, I remember: you are of noble birth?" "Yes; I was Mademoiselle de Meuil, of a good old noble family of Lorraine. Indeed I might have been quite wealthy if I had consented to marry at the bidding of my guardians. I loved Monsieur Thierry, who was then only a journeyman painter, without a name and without means. I left everything, broke with everything, threw everything to the winds to become his wife. Little by little he became famous, and just as he began to earn money rapidly, I received my inheritance. So we were repaid for our constancy, not only by thirty years of happiness, but by more or less prosperity in our old age." "And now----?" "Oh! now it's a different story! I am happy still, but in another way. I have lost my dearly loved companion, and with him all material comfort; but I still have such great consolation----" She was about to mention her son, when a servant in livery came and informed the countess that her old friend Madame Desmorges was waiting for her in the house. "To-morrow," said Julie as she rose to go, "we will talk at our ease, in your house or mine. I am anxious to know all about you, for I feel that I love you dearly. Forgive me for saying it so bluntly, but it is the truth! I must go to receive an elderly lady whom I cannot keep waiting; but I will give orders now for the workmen to come here to-morrow and open your prison door." Madame Thierry was enchanted with Madame d'Estrelle. She was a woman of keen and spontaneous sympathies, still young in heart and full of enthusiasm, because she had lived in the enthusiastic atmosphere that surrounds a beloved artist, and she was more or less romantic, as a woman must be who has sacrificed everything to love. In the first flush of excitement, she would have told her son what had happened; but he was not there, and she exerted her ingenuity to arrange for him the same surprise she had enjoyed. Many times, as they were passing from comparative opulence to their present straitened and harassing condition, Julien had taken alarm at the privations with which his mother was threatened. They had had a pretty little cottage at Sèvres, with a fine garden, where Madame Thierry tended lovingly with her own hands the flowers which her husband and son used as models. They had had to sell everything. Julien's heart ached when he saw the poor old woman confined in Paris, in that pavilion, which they hired at a very modest rate. He hoped at first that they could enjoy the surrounding gardens; but the lease informed him that neither the Marquis d'Estrelle, their landlord, nor the wealthy Monsieur Thierry, their near neighbor and near kinsman, would allow them to walk elsewhere than in the street, which was always filled with workmen and with materials for buildings under construction.