"I must go; I must depart as soon as possible. I plainly perceive that she has sold her watch without informing me. She has to work hard from morning to night; the needle of a woman cannot provide for the requirements of two persons. Ah! I ought to have left long before this! But where to go? without money, without family influence, without friends! How to get on in a world where I have never as yet lived, of the habits and customs of which I am as uninformed as an infant child! Nevertheless, I shall go, were I to beg on the highway; were I to die of hunger, I shall go." This soliloquy is referred to the eighth year of the Republic, in a very humble apartment, which perhaps still exists at Dijon, and which was then inhabited by a former pastor of a small village in the department of the Cote-d'Or. Michel Perrin, who had lived up to that time in performing acts of charity, praying to his Creator, and cultivating the garden of his manse, had found himself torn from the asylum in which twenty-two years of his tranquil existence had been spent. Deprived of the slender stipend attached to his functions, persecuted by some agents of the Republican Government, and suspected by all, the poor priest had rambled for a considerable time from village to village, sometimes to avoid captivity, sometimes to avail himself of the friendship of the many kind hearts whose gratitude he had earned in happier times. Lastly, for a year he had lived at Dijon. There he had rejoined his sister, Madeleine Perrin, the supreme mistress of his establishment, and also his sole support in the world. Madeleine, on leaving the manse, had betaken herself direct to Dijon, where she hoped to renew some old friendships, and to support herself by needlework. She had fully succeeded in utilising her talents for sewing to the extent of providing for her own wants; but when the good pastor, yielding to her earnest entreaties, had come to occupy one of the two little garret-rooms which constituted her residence, Madeleine soon became aware that a man, still in vigorous health and of good appetite, is more difficult to be fed than to be lodged.