Sitting motionless in her easy-chair, she considered what manner of death she should choose. As she was almost never alone, she could not think of the brazier of charcoal, to be lighted after closing the doors and windows. As she never went out she could not think either of poison to be purchased at the druggist’s, a little package of white powder to be buried in the depths of the pocket, with the needle-case and the thimble. There was the phosphorus on the matches, too, the verdigris on old sous, the open window with the paved street below; but the thought of forcing upon her parents the ghastly spectacle of a self-inflicted death-agony, the thought that what would remain of her, picked up amid a crowd of people, would be so frightful to look upon, made her reject that method. She still had the river. At all events, the water carries you away somewhere, so that nobody finds you and your death is shrouded in mystery. The river! She shuddered at the mere thought. But it was not the vision of the deep, black water that terrified her. The girls of Paris laugh at that. You throw your apron over your head so that you can’t see, and pouf! But she must go downstairs, into the street, all alone, and the street frightened her. Yes, it was a terrible thing to go out into the street alone. She must wait until the gas was out, steal softly downstairs when her mother had gone to bed, pull the cord of the gate, and make her way across Paris, where you meet men who stare impertinently into your face, and pass brilliantly lighted cafes. The river was a long distance away. She would be very tired. However, there was no other way than that. “I am going to bed, my child; are you going to sit up any longer?” With her eyes on her work, “my child” replied that she was. She wished to finish her dozen. “Good-night, then,” said Mamma Delobelle, her enfeebled sight being unable to endure the light longer. “I have put father’s supper by the fire. Just look at it before you go to bed.” Desire did not lie. She really intended to finish her dozen, so that her father could take them to the shop in the morning; and really, to see that tranquil little head bending forward in the white light of the lamp, one would never have imagined all the sinister thoughts with which it was thronged. At last she takes up the last bird of the dozen, a marvellously lovely little bird whose wings seem to have been dipped in sea-water, all green as they are with a tinge of sapphire. Carefully, daintily, Desiree suspends it on a piece of brass wire, in the charming attitude of a frightened creature about to fly away. Ah! how true it is that the little blue bird is about to fly away! What a desperate flight into space! How certain one feels that this time it is the great journey, the everlasting journey from which there is no return!