They were several days on the journey, and late on the afternoon of the day of their arrival, Madame Eboli, with her child in her arms, stopped at the door of a small house in Seventeenth street. By dint of gestures and broken English, the Irish, who were its inhabitants, were induced to relinquish a room to her. She had wandered the city through, until weary and way-worn, her feet refused her further support. She sank on a bed exhausted with fatigue, anxiety, and want of food. Her child she had fed with cakes, and the little creature had fallen asleep, wearied by the excitement of the day. Many and bitter were poor Madame Eboli’s reflections. She cared little for herself, but she thought that her tender and beautiful Eleonore was without a home and without friends. Not a countryman had she seen that whole day, and she had been followed by the jeers of the rude and ignorant German and Irish who form our suburbs, and who felt no pity for the poor stranger who could not make herself understood. CHAPTER II. “_Maman veut du feu!_” said a little girl, as she pushed open the door of an Irish shanty, and stood with a shovel in her hand. “Was there ever the like!” said Bridget, resting her fists on her hips. “Now this be’s the third blessed day that the child has been here for coals and said that same thing!” The child went quietly to the hearth, took some coals on her shovel, and departed. “I’se been thinking it isn’t our language she’s a speaking, though she’s such a bit of a thing one couldn’t tell rightly what she’d be afther? I’ll follow her, belike she’s in mischief, though it isn’t in my heart to think ill of such a purty little cratur!” So away ran Bridget, down one pair of stairs and up another, following the child, who pushed open a door with her shovel; and there on the naked bed she saw Madame Eboli, with no covering but a shawl. Madame Eboli spoke, but so faintly that Bridget could not understand her; she then laid Bridget’s hand on her forehead, when the Irish woman instantly perceived that she was dying with fever. Bridget flew to a poor friend of hers, whom she knew was attended by an eminent French physician of the city. He had been kind, she thought, and done much for my sick friend, why should he not do the same for this woman, who was also in distress? Fortunately he was at the bedside of his patient when Bridget arrived. “Och, sir! an there’s a poor woman in Seventeenth street, what’s a terrible faver on her, and no clothes to her bed, and nothing to ate; maybe yees’d go and see her a bit! She’s a nice looking woman, and got as purty a child as ever I see.” “I will come to her directly,” said Doctor Breton. “I think she’s a foreigner, maybe yees could talk with her, being one yoursel; she’s so wake, poor thing! there’s no telling what she’d be saying.”