which prompted it, and which we give here for the edification of the
vast tribe of expectant heirs.

Madame Niseron, the wife of the old republican sexton, always paid the
greatest attention to her husband's uncle, the priest of Blangy; the
forty or fifty thousand francs soon to be inherited from the old man
of seventy would put the family of his only nephew into a condition of
affluence which she impatiently awaited, for besides her only son (the
father of La Pechina) Madame Niseron had a charming little daughter,
lively and innocent,--one of those beings that seem perfected only
because they are to die, which she did at the age of fourteen from
"pale color," the popular name for chlorosis among the peasantry. The
darling of the parsonage, where the child fluttered about her great
uncle the abbe as she did in her home, bringing clouds and sunshine
with her, she grew to love Mademoiselle Arsene, the pretty servant
whom the old abbe engaged in 1789. Arsene was the niece of his
housekeeper, whose place the girl took by request of the latter on her
deathbed.

In 1791, just about the time that the Abbe Niseron offered his house
as an asylum to Rigou and his brother Jean, the little girl played one
of her mischievous but innocent tricks. She was playing with Arsene
and some other children at a game which consists in hiding an object
which the rest seek, and crying out, "You burn!" or "You freeze!"
according as the searchers approach or leave the hidden article.
Little Genevieve took it into her head to hide the bellows in Arsene's
bed. The bellows could not be found, and the game came to an end;
Genevieve was taken home by her mother and forgot to put the bellows
back on the nail. Arsene and her aunt searched more than a week for
them; then they stopped searching and managed to do without them, the