“Do not seem to have recognized me,” Corentin went on, “for we are pursued by relentless foes, and are obliged to disguise ourselves. But tell me what has befallen you?” “Oh, monsieur,” said the poor child, “the facts but not the story can be told--I am ruined, lost, and I do not know how----” “Where have you come from?” “I don’t know, monsieur. I fled with such precipitancy, I have come through so many streets, round so many turnings, fancying I was being followed. And when I met any one that seemed decent, I asked my way to get back to the Boulevards, so as to find the Rue de la Paix. And at last, after walking----What o’clock is it, monsieur?” “Half-past eleven,” said Corentin. “I escaped at nightfall,” said Lydie. “I have been walking for five hours.” “Well, come along; you can rest now; you will find your good Katt.” “Oh, monsieur, there is no rest for me! I only want to rest in the grave, and I will go and wait for death in a convent if I am worthy to be admitted----” “Poor little girl!--But you struggled?” “Oh yes! Oh! if you could only imagine the abject creatures they placed me with----!” “They sent you to sleep, no doubt?” “Ah! that is it” cried poor Lydie. “A little more strength and I should be at home. I feel that I am dropping, and my brain is not quite clear.--Just now I fancied I was in a garden----” Corentin took Lydie in his arms, and she lost consciousness; he carried her upstairs. “Katt!” he called. Katt came out with exclamations of joy. “Don’t be in too great a hurry to be glad!” said Corentin gravely; “the girl is very ill.” When Lydie was laid on her bed and recognized her own room by the light of two candles that Katt lighted, she became delirious. She sang scraps of pretty airs, broken by vociferations of horrible sentences she had heard. Her pretty face was mottled with purple patches. She mixed up the reminiscences of her pure childhood with those of these ten days of infamy. Katt sat weeping; Corentin paced the room, stopping now and again to gaze at Lydie. “She is paying her father’s debt,” said he. “Is there a Providence above? Oh, I was wise not to have a family. On my word of honor, a child is indeed a hostage given to misfortune, as some philosopher has said.” “Oh!” cried the poor child, sitting up in bed and throwing back her fine long hair, “instead of lying here, Katt, I ought to be stretched in the sand at the bottom of the Seine!” “Katt, instead of crying and looking at your child, which will never cure her, you ought to go for a doctor; the medical officer in the first instance, and then Monsieur Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon----We must save this innocent creature.” And Corentin wrote down the addresses of these two famous physicians.