"It is winter--that same cruelly severe winter which laid the seeds of the good Count's fatal illness. Heavy snow is on the ground, and the air is bitter and cutting. The village of Sarinet seems asleep; there is hardly any one moving about. It is so cold--so cold that the poor inhabitants, such as are not obliged to be away at their daily work, are trying to keep some little warmth in them by staying indoors. And yet indoors it is scarcely warmer; in many of the cottages there is no fire to be seen, in some but a few wretched embers on the great open chimney, down which blows the wintry wind as if angry that any one should attempt to get warm. The well, or fountain, as they call it, whence they all draw water, has been frozen for some days; when the men come home at night they have to break the ice away with hatchets. There are few children to be seen--one is almost glad to think so--and yet the absence of the little creatures has brought sad sorrow to many hearts. For not many months ago the village and some others in the neighbourhood had been visited by a wasting fever, the result of bad food, overwork, and general wretchedness, and scarcely a family but had lost some of its members--above all, among the children. "At the door of one of the miserable cottages stands a young girl of about fifteen, crying bitterly. Cold though it is, she scarcely seems to feel it. She looks up and down the road as if watching for some one, then she re-enters the cottage, which is bare and miserable beyond description, and tries to coax into flame a little heap of twigs and withered leaves which are all the fuel she possesses. Her clothing is desperately poor--one could scarcely see that it had ever had any colour or shape--and yet there is an attempt at neatness about her, and she is or rather she would have been had she had a fair amount of food and decent clothing, a pretty, sweet-looking girl. "As she stands again in her restless misery at the door of the cottage, an old woman comes out from the next door. "`What is the matter, Marguerite?' she says; `is your brother ill again?' "`Oh, Madelon,' she exclaims, `I think it would be better if he were dead! My poor boy!' and she burst out sobbing again. "`What is it? Anything new? Come in here and tell me,' said the woman, and she drew Marguerite inside her own dwelling, which was, perhaps, a shade less wretched than its neighbour, though in one corner, on a pallet bed hardly worth calling such--it was in reality but a bag of coarse sacking filled with straw--a man, looking more like a corpse than a human being, was lying, apparently in a state of half-unconsciousness.