Alexa had upon her breast a mark, evidently produced by gunpowder. Her nurse, and everybody else who had seen it, declared it to be perfectly shapeless, and probably a failure from the awkwardness of some one who had intended to impress a cipher there; but Isabeau had a hundred times examined it, and as often declared it to be a coronet. Hitherto this notion had only been a source of mirth to both of them, but now it became a theme of incessant and most anxious meditation to Isabeau. She remembered to have heard that when a child is deposited at the Foundling Hospital of Paris, everything, whether clothes or token, which is left with it, is preserved and registered, with the name and the date of the reception, in order, if reclamation be made within a certain time, that all assistance possible shall be given for the identification. What space this "certain time" included Isabeau knew not, but she fancied that it could not be less than twenty years; and with this persuasion she determined to set about an inquiry that might at least lead to the knowledge either that some particular tokens had been left with Alexa, or that there were none. With this sort of feverish dream working in her head, Isabeau rose almost before daylight one morning, and escaping the observation of every one, let herself out by the door of a salon which opened on the terrace, and hastened to the abode of Mère Françoise. It was some time before she could make the old woman understand her object; but when she did, she declared herself ready to do all and everything Mademoiselle desired for her "dear baby," as she persisted to call the tall, the graceful, the beautiful Alexa. As Isabeau had a good deal of trouble to make her plans and projects clearly understood to Mère Françoise, it will be better not to relate particularly what passed between them: suffice it to say, that by dint of much repetition and a tolerably heavy purse, Françoise at last agreed to set off for Paris on the following morning, "without telling a living soul what for." Such were the conditions enforced; which were the more easily adhered to, because cross Père Gautier had grumbled himself into his grave some years before. On reaching the hospital, Françoise made her demand, "de la part d'une grande dame," for any token which they possessed relative to a baby taken ... &c. &c. &c. The first answer she received was, that the time of limitation for such inquiries had long expired; and she was on the point of leaving the bureau, all hope of intelligence abandoned, when an old sister of charity who chanced to be there for some message from the superior, and who had listened to her inquiries and all the particulars thus rehearsed, stopped her by saying, that it was odd enough two great ladies should send to the hospital with inquiries for the same child. "But, however," she added, "it can't much matter now to either of them, for the baby died before it was a twelvemonth old."