leader of those bold Alsacian guerillas who came near saving the
Emperor in the campaign of France. He died at Metz,--robbed, pillaged,
ruined. In 1814 Napoleon put the little Josephine Schiltz, then about
nine years old, at Saint-Denis. Having lost both father and mother and
being without a home and without resources, the poor child was not
dismissed from the institution on the second return of the Bourbons.
She was under-mistress of the school till 1827, but then her patience
gave way; her beauty seduced her. When she reached her majority
Josephine Schiltz, the Empress's goddaughter, was on the verge of the
adventurous life of a courtesan, persuaded to that doubtful future by
the fatal example of some of her comrades like herself without
resources, who congratulated themselves on their decision. She
substituted /on/ for /il/ in her father's name and placed herself
under the patronage of Saint-Aurelie.

Lively, witty, and well-educated, she committed more faults than her
duller companions, whose misdemeanors had invariably self-interest for
their base. After knowing various writers, poor but dishonest, clever
but deeply in debt; after trying certain rich men as calculating as
they were foolish; and after sacrificing solid interests to one true
love,--thus going through all the schools in which experience is
taught,--on a certain day of extreme misery, when, at Valentino's (the
first stage to Musard) she danced in a gown, hat, and mantle that were
all borrowed, she attracted the attention of Arthur de Rochefide, who
had come there to see the famous /galop/. Her cleverness instantly
captivated the man who at that time knew not what passion to devote
himself to. So that two years after his desertion by Beatrix, the
memory of whom often humiliated him, the marquis was not blamed by any
one for marrying, so to speak, in the thirteenth arrondissement, a
substitute for his wife.