"True enough--it is singular I should have left it out, but it is explained in a word. These same friends of Mademoiselle de Coigny gave me the information. It appears that on one inclement night, as the _keeper of the Morgue_ was returning from an official visit to the Chief of Police, toward his own quarters, which are adjoining and over the _dead room_--he stumbled over something which a flash of lightning at the instant showed to be the body of a man. He was quite dead, but, nestled down close by his side, with one of her little hands on his face, was a child, about two years of age. Jean Maurice Sorel, although long inured to repulsive sights, had not grown callous to misery. By birth he was considerably above his somewhat ignominious office; he had narrowly escaped with his life when Louis XVI. was brought to the scaffold, for some indiscreet expressions that savored too much of royalty; but in the tumults which succeeded, he had, he scarcely knew how, through some influence with the chief of one of the departments, been appointed to this repulsive duty. But as I have said, his heart was just as kind as ever, after many years discharge of it; and Jean Maurice Sorel, instead of repining at his lot, blessed God daily that he had the means of supporting a wife and children, while so many of his old friends had literally starved to death. Such was the person who stumbled over the body of the dead man, and discovered the living child beside it. He called at once for assistance, and had the corpse conveyed to his house, while he carried the little girl in his arms. She was too young to give any information about herself, but on searching the pockets of the deceased, several papers were found which disclosed enough to satisfy Jean Maurice Sorel that in the wasted, attenuated form before him, he beheld his once friend and benefactor the Marquis de Coigny, who, he supposed, had perished by the guillotine in the revolution. The papers permitted no doubt of the fact that the little girl was his granddaughter and only descendant, and she was commended to the care of the kind-hearted when death should overtake him.