Is it decent that the Comtesse Bridau de Brambourg should die in a
hospital, no matter what may have been her faults? If such is to

be my fate, if such is your determination and that of monsieur le
comte, so be it; but if so, will you, who are the friend of Doctor

Bianchon, ask him for a permit to let me enter a hospital?
The person who carries this letter has been eleven consecutive

days to the hotel de Brambourg, rue de Clichy, without getting any
help from my husband. The poverty in which I now am prevents my

employing a lawyer to make a legal demand for what is due to me,
that I may die with decency. Nothing can save me, I know that. In

case you are unwilling to see your unhappy sister-in-law, send me,
at least, the money to end my days. Your brother desires my death;

he has always desired it. He warned me that he knew three ways of
killing a woman, but I had not the sense to foresee the one he has

employed.
In case you will consent to relieve me, and judge for yourself the

misery in which I now am, I live in the rue du Houssay, at the
corner of the rue Chantereine, on the fifth floor. If I cannot pay

my rent to-morrow I shall be put out--and then, where can I go?
May I call myself,

Your sister-in-law,
Comtesse Flore de Brambourg.

"What a pit of infamy!" cried Joseph; "there is something under it
all."

"Let us send for the woman who brought the letter; we may get the
preface of the story," said Bixiou.

The woman presently appeared, looking, as Bixiou observed, like
perambulating rags. She was, in fact, a mass of old gowns, one on top

of another, fringed with mud on account of the weather, the whole
mounted on two thick legs with heavy feet which were ill-covered by

ragged stockings and shoes from whose cracks the water oozed upon the
floor. Above the mound of rags rose a head like those that Charlet has

given to his scavenger-women, caparisoned with a filthy bandanna
handkerchief slit in the folds.

"What is your name?" said Joseph, while Bixiou sketched her, leaning
on an umbrella belonging to the year II. of the Republic.

"Madame Gruget, at your service. I've seen better days, my young
gentleman," she said to Bixiou, whose laugh affronted her. "If my poor

girl hadn't had the ill-luck to love some one too much, you wouldn't
see me what I am. She drowned herself in the river, my poor Ida,--

saving your presence! I've had the folly to nurse up a quaterne, and
that's why, at seventy-seven years of age, I'm obliged to take care of

sick folks for ten sous a day, and go--"
"--without clothes?" said Bixiou. "My grandmother nursed up a trey,

but she dressed herself properly."
"Out of my ten sous I have to pay for a lodging--"

"What's the matter with the lady you are nursing?"
"In the first place, she hasn't got any money; and then she has a

disease that scares the doctors. She owes me for sixty days' nursing;
that's why I keep on nursing her. The husband, who is a count,--she is

really a countess,--will no doubt pay me when she is dead; and so I've
lent her all I had. And now I haven't anything; all I did have has

gone to the pawn-brokers. She owes me forty-seven francs and twelve
sous, beside thirty francs for the nursing. She wants to kill herself

with charcoal. I tell her it ain't right; and, indeed, I've had to get
the concierge to look after her while I'm gone, or she's likely to

jump out of the window."
"But what's the matter with her?" said Joseph.

"Ah! monsieur, the doctor from the Sisters' hospital came; but as to
the disease," said Madame Gruget, assuming a modest air, "he told me

she must go to the hospital. The case is hopeless."
"Let us go and see her," said Bixiou.

"Here," said Joseph to the woman, "take these ten francs."
Plunging his hand into the skull and taking out all his remaining

money, the painter called a coach from the rue Mazarin and went to
find Bianchon, who was fortunately at home. Meantime Bixiou went off

at full speed to the rue de Bussy, after Desroches. The four friends
reached Flore's retreat in the rue du Houssay an hour later.

"That Mephistopheles on horseback, named Philippe Bridau," said
Bixiou, as they mounted the staircase, "has sailed his boat cleverly

to get rid of his wife. You know our old friend Lousteau? well,
Philippe paid him a thousand francs a month to keep Madame Bridau in

the society of Florine, Mariette, Tullia, and the Val-Noble. When
Philippe saw his crab-girl so used to pleasure and dress that she

couldn't do without them, he stopped paying the money, and left her to
get it as she could--it is easy to know how. By the end of eighteen

months, the brute had forced his wife, stage by stage, lower and
lower; till at last, by the help of a young officer, he gave her a

taste for drinking. As he went up in the world, his wife went down;
and the countess is now in the mud. The girl, bred in the country, has

a strong constitution. I don't know what means Philippe has lately
taken to get rid of her. I am anxious to study this precious little

drama, for I am determined to avenge Joseph here. Alas, friends," he
added, in a tone which left his three companions in doubt whether he

was jesting or speakingseriously, "give a man over to a vice and
you'll get rid of him. Didn't Hugo say: 'She loved a ball, and died of

it'? So it is. My grandmother loved the lottery. Old Rouget loved a
loose life, and Lolotte killed him. Madame Bridau, poor woman, loved

Philippe, and perished of it. Vice! vice! my dear friends, do you want
to know what vice is? It is the Bonneau of death."

"Then you'll die of a joke," said Desroches, laughing.
Above the fourth floor, the young men were forced to climb one of the

steep, straight stairways that are almost ladders, by which the attics
of Parisian houses are often reached. Though Joseph, who remembered

Flore in all her beauty, expected to see some frightful change, he was
not prepared for the hideousspectacle which now smote his artist's

eye. In a room with bare, unpapered walls, under the sharp pitch of an
attic roof, on a cot whose scantymattress was filled, perhaps, with

refuse cotton, a woman lay, green as a body that has been drowned two
days, thin as a consumptive an hour before death. This putrid skeleton

had a miserable checked handkerchief bound about her head, which had
lost its hair. The circle round the hollow eyes was red, and the

eyelids were like the pellicle of an egg. Nothing remained of the
body, once so captivating, but an ignoble, bony structure. As Flore

caught sight of the visitors, she drew across her breast a bit of
muslin which might have been a fragment of a window-curtain, for it

was edged with rust as from a rod. The young men saw two chairs, a
broken bureau on which was a tallow-candle stuck into a potato, a few

dishes on the floor, and an earthen fire-pot in a corner of the
chimney, in which there was no fire; this was all the furniture of the

room. Bixiou noticed the remaining sheets of writing-paper, brought
from some neighboringgrocery for the letter which the two women had

doubtless concocted together. The word "disgusting" is a positive to
which no superlative exists, and we must therefore use it to convey

the impression caused by this sight. When the dying woman saw Joseph
approaching her, two great tears rolled down her cheeks.

"She can still weep!" whispered Bixiou. "A strange sight,--tears from
dominos! It is like the miracle of Moses."

"How burnt up!" cried Joseph.
"In the fires of repentance," said Flore. "I cannot get a priest; I

have nothing, not even a crucifix, to help me see God. Ah, monsieur!"
she cried, raising her arms, that were like two pieces of carved wood,

"I am a guilty woman; but God never punished any one as he has
punished me! Philippe killed Max, who advised me to do dreadful

things, and now he has killed me. God uses him as a scourge!"
"Leave me alone with her," said Bianchon, "and let me find out if the