It was but a short ten minutes after Bridget’s summons when the doctor opened the door of Madame Eboli’s room. The little girl was crying, and making vain efforts to turn her mother toward her. As the child spoke in French, he addressed the mother in that language, giving her at the same time, some reviving medicine. After taking it, she was able to give him an account of herself, and also to tell him of her anxiety concerning Eleonore. The doctor left the house, promising to return in an hour or two. Proceeding to the hospital, he procured an entrance for her, and by the afternoon she had been carried there, placed on a nice clean bed, and her wants well attended to—thanks to the generous kindness of a Christian heart! He then exerted himself in behalf of the little one. He related the strange history of the mother to all his French patients, and raised a subscription to pay for the child’s board after her mother’s death, which was evidently near. On his way to the hospital one morning, he over-took one Mr. Carron, and told him Madame Eboli’s sad story, asking his aid. They had by that time reached the door of the hospital, and Mr. Carron accepted Doctor Breton’s invitation to enter and see the little Eleonore. Mr. Carron was a very impulsive man. He never hesitated, never reflected, (never asked his wife’s opinion, as every reasonable man should,) but went into raptures over little Eleonore’s beauty, and offered on the spot to adopt the child as his own—an offer that was thankfully accepted by the poor mother. It was but a week after this, that the doctor found Madame Eboli much worse. On leaving her he requested to be called should any change take place in her symptoms. CHAPTER III. . . . . . It was ten o’clock. The night-lamp of the infirmary showed with a horrible distinctness the haggard inmates who were tossing and groaning on their pallets. The doctor sat beside the bed of Madame Eboli. They were discoursing concerning Eleonore. “I conjure you,” said the doctor, “tell me the name of your family. It is necessary to the future welfare of your child!” “My parents cast me from them. They loved me not—how should they love my child? No! it is better that she should eat the bread of strangers, and receive good and evil from their hands, than suffer only insult and degradation from her mother’s parents.” “Then at least tell me your husband’s name, and where his relations are to be found?” “Alas! Gustave Eboli was an orphan, and poor; therefore my father said I should not love him. . . . But I feel very faint—you said I should see my child soon?”