you have seased to love me. My eyes are worthy still to look into
yours, but I do not ask an interfew; I fear my weakness and my
love. But for pitty's sake write me a line at once; it will give
me the corage I need to meet my trubbles. Farewell, orther of all
my woes, but the only frend my heart has chosen and will never
forget.

Ida.


This life of a young girl, with its love betrayed, its fatal joys, its
pangs, its miseries, and its horrible resignation, summed up in a few
words, this humble poem, essentially Parisian, written on dirty paper,
influenced for a passing moment Monsieur de Maulincour. He asked
himself whether this Ida might not be some poor relation of Madame
Jules, and that strange rendezvous, which he had witnessed by chance,
the mere necessity of a charitable effort. But could that old pauper
have seduced this Ida? There was something impossible in the very
idea. Wandering in this labyrinth of reflections, which crossed,
recrossed, and obliterated one another, the baron reached the rue
Pagevin, and saw a hackney-coach standing at the end of the rue des
Vieux-Augustins where it enters the rue Montmartre. All waiting
hackney-coaches now had an interest for him.

"Can she be there?" he thought to himself, and his heart beat fast
with a hot and feverish throbbing.

He pushed the little door with the bell, but he lowered his head as he
did so, obeying a sense of shame, for a voice said to him secretly:--