"Ah!" said a Parisian lady to her one day, after hearing of her thousand occupations and privations, "how do you contrive to live; and what can you care about life? I should have had recourse to charcoal long ago, if I had been in your situation. Yet you are always laughing and gay, as if you dined on foie-gras and truffles every day of your existence!" "So I do," replied the little heroine--"at least on what is quite as good--for I have all I want, all I care about, never owing a sous, and being a charge to no one. Besides, I have a secret happiness which nothing can take away; and, when I go into the church of a morning to mass, I thank God with all my heart for all the blessings he gives me, and, above all, for the extreme content which makes all the world seem a paradise of enjoyment. I never know what it is to be dull, and as for charcoal, I have no objection to it in a foot-warmer, but that is all the acquaintance I am likely to make with it." "Poor soul!" returned the Parisienne, "how I pity you!" BLEAK HOUSE.[D] BY CHARLES DICKENS. [Footnote D: Continued from the June Number.] CHAPTER XI.--OUR DEAR BROTHER. A touch on the lawyer's wrinkled hand, as he stands in the dark room, irresolute, makes him start and say, "What's that?" "It's me," returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his ear. "Can't you wake him?" "No." "What have you done with your candle?" "It's gone out. Here it is." Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and tries to get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his endeavors are vain. Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his lodger, that he will go down stairs, and bring a lighted candle from the shop, the old man departs. Mr. Tulkinghorn, for some new reason that he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs outside. The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Krook comes slowly up, with his green-eyed cat following at his heels. "Does the man generally sleep like this?" inquires the lawyer, in a low voice. "Hi! I don't know," says Krook, shaking his head, and lifting his eyebrows. "I know next to nothing of his habits, except that he keeps himself very close." Thus whispering, they both go in together. As the light goes in, the great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. Not so the eyes upon the bed. "God save us!" exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He is dead!" Krook drops the heavy hand he has taken up, so suddenly that the arm swings over the bedside. They look at one another for a moment. "Send for some doctor! Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here's poison by the bed! Call out for Flite, will you?" says Krook, with his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire's wings.