"We sat by the fire chatting familiarly, and she told me with a sigh that she was married to a Buonopartist hero, who enlivened her every evening before going to bed with a description of one of his battles; a few days ago, before going away, he had fought for her the battle of Jena; he was very ill, and with difficulty survived the Prussian campaign. When I asked her how long her father had been dead, she laughed, and confessed that she had never known a father, and that her so-called mother had never been married. "'Not married!' I exclaimed; 'I saw her myself in London in the deepest mourning on account of her husband's death!' "'Oh,' replied Laurence, 'for twelve years she had always dressed herself in black, to excite people's compassion as an unhappy widow, as well as to allure any donkey desirous of marrying, for she hoped to reach the haven of marriage quicker under black flags. But only death had pity on her, and she died of a hæmorrhage. I never loved her, for she always, gave me plenty of beating and little to eat. I should have died of starvation if Monsieur Turlutu had not often given me a little piece of bread on the sly; but the dwarf wished to marry me on that account, and when his hopes were frustrated he made common cause with my mother--I say 'mother' from custom--and both agreed to torment me. They always said that I was a superfluous creature, and that the learned dog was worth a thousand times more than I with my bad dancing. And then they praised the dog at my expense, extolled him to the skies, caressed him, fed him with cakes, and threw me the crumbs. The dog, they said, was their best support; he delighted the public, who were not in the least interested in me; the dog must support me by his work. I ate the bread of the dog. The cursed dog!' "'Oh, do not curse him any more,' I broke in upon her passion; 'he is dead now; I saw him die.' "'Is the beast dead?' exclaimed Laurence, springing up with a red glow of joy over her face. "'And the dwarf is also dead,' I added. "'Monsieur Turlutu?' cried Laurence, also with joy. But this joy gradually died from her face, and in a milder, almost melancholy tone, she added, 'Poor Turlutu!' "When I told her, without any concealment, that the dwarf had complained of her very bitterly on his death-bed, she became passionately disturbed, and assured me, with many protestations, that she had had the foresight to care for him as well as possible, that she had offered him a pension if he would go and live quietly somewhere in the country. 'But ambitious as he was,' Laurence pursued, "he wished to stay in Paris, and even to live at my house; he could then, he thought, through my interposition, renew his connections in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and again take his former brilliant position in society. When I flatly refused him this, he told me that I was a cursed ghost, a vampyre, a death-child."