Servants of Sin. John Bloundelle-Burton

both home and wife after a day's search and many inquiries made in cellars and reeking courts and hideous alleys, into which none were allowed to penetrate except those who bore the brand of vagabond and scoundrel stamped clear and indelible upon them.

      Also, he found something else: A child-a girl eight years old-playing in a heap of charred faggots in the chimney; a child who told him that she was hungry, and that there was no food at all in the place.

      "Whose is the brat?" he asked of his wife, knowing very well that, at least, it was not hers, since it must of a certainty have been born three years before he went "into retreat" on the Mediterranean. "Whose? Have you grown so rich that you adopt children now; or is it paid for, eh?"

      "It is paid for," the patient creature said, shuddering at the man's return, since she had hoped that he had died in the galley and would never, consequently, wander back to Paris to molest her. "Paid for, and will be-"

      "Badly paid for, at least, since its adoption leads you to no better circumstances than these in which I find you. Give me some food. I have eaten nothing for hours."

      "Nor I; nor the child there. Not for twenty-four hours. I have not a sol; nor anything to sell."

      The man looked at his wife from under bushy black eyebrows-though eyebrows not much blacker than his baked face; then he thrust his hand into his pocket and drew forth five sols and weighed them in his hands as though they were gold pieces. He had stolen them that morning from the basket of a blind man sleeping in the sun outside St. Roch, when no one was looking.

      "Go, buy bread," he said. "Get something. I am starving. Go."

      "Bread-with these! They will not buy enough for one. And we are so hungry, she and I. See, the child weeps for hunger. Have you no more?"

      "Not a coin. Have you?"

      "Alas! God, He knows! Nothing. And we are dying of hunger."

      "How is it you are not at work, earning something?"

      "They will trust me no more. They fear I shall sell the goods confided to me. Who entrusts velvets, or silk, or laces to such as I, or lets such as I enter their shops to work there?"

      "What is to be done, then?"

      "Die," the woman said. "There is nought else to do."

      "Bah! In Paris! Imbecile! In Paris, full of wealth and food! Stay here till I return."

      And he went swiftly out. Some hours later, when the sun had sunk behind the great roof of the Cathedral, when the children were playing about beneath the spot where the statues were, and when the pigeons were seeking their niches, those three were eating a hearty meal, all seated on the floor, since there was neither chair nor table nor bed within the room; a meal consisting of a loaf, a piece of bacon, and some hard-boiled eggs. The woman and the child got but a poor share, 'tis true, their portions being the morsels which Vandecque tossed to them every now and again; while of a wine bottle, which he constantly applied to his mouth, they got nothing at all. Yet their hunger was appeased; they were glad enough to do without drink.

* * * * * *

      The passing years brought changes to two of these outcasts, as it did to the wealthy in Paris. Vandecque's wife had died of the small-pox twelve months after his return; the adopted child, Vandecque's niece, Mdlle. Vauxcelles, was developing fast into a lovely girl; while as for Vandecque-well! the gallows bird, the man who had worn the iron collar round his neck and who bore upon his shoulders the brand, had disappeared, and in his place had come a grave, sedate person clad always in sombre clothes, yet a man conspicuous for the purity of his linen and lace and the neatness of his attire. While, although he had not as yet attained to the splendour of the Passage du Commerce, his rooms in the Rue du Paon were comfortable and there was no lack of either food, or drink, or fuel-the three things that the outcast who has escaped and triumphed over the miseries and memories of the past most seeks to make sure of in the future.

      He was known also to great and rich personages now, he had patrons amongst the nobility and was acquainted with the roués who circled round the Regent. He was prominent, and, as he frequently told himself, was "respected."

      He was a successful man.

      How he had become so, however, he did not dilate on-or certainly not on the earlier of his successes after his reappearance! – even when making those statements about his romantic life with which he occasionally favoured his friends. Had he done so, he would not, perhaps, have shocked very much the ears, or morals, of his listeners, but he must, at least, have betrayed the names of several eminent patrons for whom he had done dirty work in a manner which might have placed his own ears, if not his life, in danger, and would, thereby, probably have led to his once more traversing the road to Marseilles or to Cette-which is almost the same thing-to again partake of the shelter of the galleys.

      Yet he would never have found or come into contact with these illustrious patrons, these men who required secret agents to minister to their private pleasures, had it not been for a stupendous piece of good fortune which befell him shortly after his return to Paris from the Mediterranean. It was, indeed, so strange a piece of good fortune that it may well be set down here as a striking instance of how the Devil takes care of his own.

      From his late wife he had never been able to obtain any information as to who "the brat" was whom he had found playing about in the ashes on the hearth in the garret, when he returned from his period of southern seclusion; he had not found out even so much as what name she was supposed to bear, except that of "Laure," which seemed to have been bestowed on the child by Madame Vandecque on the principle that one name was as good as another by which to call a child. She had said herself that she did not know anything further-that, being horribly poor after Vandecque had departed for the south, she had yielded to the offer of an abbé-now dead-to adopt the girl, twenty-five louis-d'ors being paid to her for doing so. That was all, she said, that she knew. But, she added (with a firmness which considerably astonished her lord and master) that, especially as she had come to love the creature which was so dependent on her, she meant to carry out her contract and to do her best by her. To Vandecque's suspicious nature-a nature sharpened by countless acts of roguery of all kinds-this statement presented itself as a lie, and he believed that either his wife had received a very much larger sum of money in payment for the child's adoption than she had stated, or that she was surreptitiously receiving regular sums of money at intervals on its behalf. Of the two ideas, he inclined more to the latter than the former, and it was owing to this belief that he did not at once take steps to disembarrass himself of the burden with which he found himself saddled, and send the child of at once to the Home of the Foundlings whence she would eventually have been sold to a beggar for a few livres and trained to demand alms in the street, as usually happened to deserted children in the reign of Louis the Great. Later on he was thankful-he told himself that he was "devoutly thankful" – that he had never done anything of the sort.

      He was one day, about a year after his wife's death, mounting the ricketty stairs which led to the garret in which he had found the woman on his return, when, to his astonishment, he saw a Sister of Charity standing outside the door of his room, looking hesitatingly about her, and glancing down towards him as he ascended to where she was. And it was very evident to him that the woman had been knocking at his door without receiving any answer to her summons. This was a thing certain to happen in any case, since it was Vandecque's habit on quitting his shelter during the day-time to send Laure to play with all the other vagrant children of the alley, and to put the key in his pocket. At night, the plan was varied somewhat when he went forth, the girl being sent to her bed and locked into the room for safety.

      "Madame desires-?" he said now, as he reached the landing on which the sister stood, while taking off his frayed hat to her with an inimitable gesture of politeness which his varied and "romantic" career had taught him well enough how to assume when necessary. "Madame desires-"

      "To see the woman, Madame Jasmin," the sister answered, her grave solemn eyes roving over the man's poor clothes as she answered. Or, perhaps, since his clothes in such a spot as this would scarcely be out of place, examining his face with curiosity.

      "Madame Jasmin!" he repeated to himself, but to himself only-"Madame Jasmin!" How long it was since he had heard that name! Ages ago, it seemed; ages. "Madame Jasmin!" The name his wife had borne