Every night at ten o'clock a scratch was heard at the door; it was my grandfather's dog come to fetch him home,--her jaws empty on moonlit nights, but filled by a stick bearing a lantern at each end when there was no moon. Her name was _Charmante_, and she was indeed charmingly intelligent. For eight or ten years, until her death, she performed this trick, and she was never known to have scratched at the door either ten minutes too soon or ten minutes too late, or to have taken the longest way instead of the shortest, or to have broken a single lantern. One day my grandfather complained of violent pains in his side, took to his room and then to his bed. Finally, one evening, they sent me away from the house as they had done when my father died. They took me to the house of one of our neighbours, named Lepage, who was a glazier. There I spent the night, and on the morrow my grandfather died. My mother inherited the famous thirty acres of land I have already spoken of, and the house for which we paid the life-annuity. But it was the obligation to pay the annuity, that she inherited really, and not the house. Had my mother only given up all hope of obtaining a pension, and of being paid the arrears of 28,500 francs due to my father, she would have sold the thirty acres of ground for the 30,000 or 35,000 francs which it was worth, she would have waived her rights to M. Harlay's house for 5000 or 6000 francs, and, with these 40,000 francs she would have had 2000 livres income, on which with care we could have lived perfectly well. On the contrary, however, she began borrowing on the land by mortgaging it, ever hoping to repay herself by the unlucky arrears. It was quite out of the question to live out of the revenue from the land; it scarcely paid two per cent. I do not know whether we had moved before or after my grandfather's death: I think, however, it must have been before. We lived then in the rue de Lormet, quite close to the house where I was born. Shortly after this time we lost in this house the cousin whom I used to call Mamma Zine. So death had fallen heavily on our family circle; in four years four relatives had gone to eternity, one after the other, and were laid in the little cemetery of which I have already spoken. But, with the exception of my father's, none of the other deaths made any lasting impression on my mind. They only meant a daily walk to the cemetery, and one more mound added to the rest, which my mother called her garden; a fresh cypress was planted near the old cypresses; new roses blossomed by the old rose; my mother shed more tears; and that was all. Our graves were near that of Demoustier; and his epitaph was the first memorial inscription I had deciphered; it had been composed by Legouvé, and ran thus:-- "Beneath this stone rests, in the sleep of the just, "CHARLES-ALBERT DEMOUSTIER,