Is it decent that the Comtesse Bridau de Brambourg should die in a hospital, no matter what may have been her faults? If such is to be my fate, if such is your determination and that of monsieur le comte, so be it; but if so, will you, who are the friend of Doctor Bianchon, ask him for a permit to let me enter a hospital? The person who carries this letter has been eleven consecutive days to the hotel de Brambourg, rue de Clichy, without getting any help from my husband. The poverty in which I now am prevents my employing a lawyer to make a legal demand for what is due to me, that I may die with decency. Nothing can save me, I know that. In case you are unwilling to see your unhappy sister-in-law, send me, at least, the money to end my days. Your brother desires my death; he has always desired it. He warned me that he knew three ways of killing a woman, but I had not the sense to foresee the one he has employed. In case you will consent to relieve me, and judge for yourself the misery in which I now am, I live in the rue du Houssay, at the corner of the rue Chantereine, on the fifth floor. If I cannot pay my rent to-morrow I shall be put out--and then, where can I go? May I call myself, Your sister-in-law, Comtesse Flore de Brambourg. “What a pit of infamy!” cried Joseph; “there is something under it all.” “Let us send for the woman who brought the letter; we may get the preface of the story,” said Bixiou. The woman presently appeared, looking, as Bixiou observed, like perambulating rags. She was, in fact, a mass of old gowns, one on top of another, fringed with mud on account of the weather, the whole mounted on two thick legs with heavy feet which were ill-covered by ragged stockings and shoes from whose cracks the water oozed upon the floor. Above the mound of rags rose a head like those that Charlet has given to his scavenger-women, caparisoned with a filthy bandanna handkerchief slit in the folds. “What is your name?” said Joseph, while Bixiou sketched her, leaning on an umbrella belonging to the year II. of the Republic. “Madame Gruget, at your service. I’ve seen better days, my young gentleman,” she said to Bixiou, whose laugh affronted her. “If my poor girl hadn’t had the ill-luck to love some one too much, you wouldn’t see me what I am. She drowned herself in the river, my poor Ida,--saving your presence! I’ve had the folly to nurse up a quaterne, and that’s why, at seventy-seven years of age, I’m obliged to take care of sick folks for ten sous a day, and go--” “--without clothes?” said Bixiou. “My grandmother nursed up a trey, but she dressed herself properly.” “Out of my ten sous I have to pay for a lodging--” “What’s the matter with the lady you are nursing?”