It was that of Monsieur Colleville, an intimate friend of Thuillier.
But before we proceed to describe Pylades let us finish with Orestes,
and explain why Thuillier--that handsome Thuillier--was left without a
family of his own--for the family, be it said, is non-existent without
children. Herein appears one of those deep mysteries which lie buried
in the arena of private life, a few shreds of which rise to the
surface at moments when the pain of a concealed situation grows
poignant. This concerns the life of Madame and Mademoiselle Thuillier;
so far, we have seen only the life (and we may call it the public
life) of Jerome Thuillier.

Marie-Jeanne-Brigitte Thuillier, four years older than her brother,
had been utterly sacrificed to him; it was easier to give a career to
one than a "dot" to the other. Misfortune to some natures is a pharos,
which illumines to their eyes the dark low corners of social
existence. Superior to her brother both in mind and energy, Brigitte
had one of those natures which, under the hammer of persecution,
gather themselves together, become compact and powerfully resistant,
not to say inflexible. Jealous of her independence, she kept aloof
from the life of the household; choosing to make herself the sole
arbiter of her own fate. At fourteen years of age, she went to live
alone in a garret, not far from the ministry of finance, which was
then in the rue Vivienne, and also not far from the Bank of France,
then, and now, in the rue de la Vrilliere. There she bravely gave
herself up to a form of industry little known and the perquisite of a
few persons, which she obtained, thanks to the patrons of her father.
It consisted in making bags to hold coin for the Bank, the Treasury,
and the great financial houses. At the end of three years she employed
two workwomen. By investing her savings on the Grand-Livre, she found
herself, in 1814, the mistress of three thousand six hundred francs a