well in his affairs. I am enchanted! It is so
amiable of him to send me this little cadeau!"

Monsieur Panpan, with his strange lustrous
eyes, if not enchanted, rubbed his thin bony
hands together as he sat up in the bed, and
chuckled in an unearthly way at the good
news. Having executed our commission, we
felt it would be intrusive to prolong our stay,
and therefore rose to depart, but received so
pressing an invitation to repeat the visit,
that, on the part of myself and friend, who
was to leave Paris in a few days, I could not
refuse to comply with a wish so cordially
expressed, and evidently sincere. And thus
commenced my acquaintance with the Panpans.

I cannot trace the course of our acquaintance,
or tell how, from an occasional call, my
visits became those of a bosom friend; but
certain it is, that soon each returning Sunday
saw me a guest at the table of Monsieur Panpan,
where my convert and serviette became
sacred to my use; and, after the meal, were
carefully cleaned and laid apart for the next
occasion. This, I afterwards learned, was a
customary mark of consideration towards an
esteemed friend among the poorer class of
Parisians. I soon learned their history. Their
every-day existence was a simple, easily
read story, and not the less simple and
touching because it is the every-day story of
thousands of poor French families. Madame
was a staymaker; and the whole care and
responsibility of providing for the wants and
comforts qf a sick husband; for her little
Victor, her eldest born; and the monthly
stipend of her infant Henri, out at nurse
some hundred leagues from Paris, hung upon
the unaided exertions of her single hands, and
the scrupulous and wonderful economy of her
management.

One day I found Madame in tears. Panpan
himself lay with rigid features, and his wiry
hands spread out upon the counterpane.
Madame was at first inconsolable and
inexplicable, but at length, amid sobs, half
suppressed, related the nature of their new
misfortune. Would Monsieur believe that
those miserable nurse-people, insulting as
they were, had sent from the country to
say, that unless the three months nursing of
little Henri, together with the six pounds
of lump sugar, which formed part of the
original bargain, were immediately paid,
cette pauvre bête (Henri that was), would
be instantly dispatched to Paris, and
proceedings taken for the recovery of the debt.
Ces miserables!

Here poor Madame Panpan could not
contain herself, but gave way to her affliction
in a violent outburst of tears. And yet the
poor child, the cause of all this sorrow, was
almost as great a stranger to his mother
as he was to me, who had never seen him
in my life. With scarcely a week's existence
to boast of, he had been swaddled
up in strange clothes; entrusted to strange
hands; and hurried away some hundred
leagues from the capital, to scramble
about the clay floor of an unwholesome
cottage, in company perhaps with some
half-dozen atomies like himself, as strange to
each other, as they were to their own
parents, to pass those famous mois de
uourrice which form so important and
momentous a period in the lives of most French
people. Madam Panpan was however in
no way responsible for this state of things;
the system was there, not only recognised,
but encouraged; become indeed a part of
the social habits of the people, and it was.
no wonder if her poverty should have driven
her to so popular and ready a means of
meeting a great difficulty. How she extricated
herself from this dilemma, it is not necessary to
state; suffice it to say, that a few weeks
saw cette petite b Henri, happily
domiciled in the Place Valois; and, if not
over-burdened with apparel, at least released
from the terrible debt of six and thirty
francs, and six pounds of lump-sugar.

It naturally happened, that on the
pleasant Sunday afternoons, when we had
disposed of our small, but often sumptuous
dinner; perhaps a gigot de mouton with
a clove of garlic in the knuckle; a fricassée
de rabbits with onions, or a fricandeau;
Panpan himself would tell me part of his
history; and in the course of our salad;
of our little dessert of fresh fruit, or
currant jelly; or perhaps, stimulated by the
tiniest glass of brandy, would grow warm in
the recital of his early experiences, and the
unhappy chance which had brought him into
his present condition.

"Ah, Monsieur! " he said, one day, " little
would you think to see me cribbed up in this
miserable bed, that I had been a soldier, or
that the happiest clays of iny lite had been
passed in the woods of Fontainebleau, following
the chase in the retinue of King Charles
the Tenth of France. I was a wild young
fellow in my boyhood; and, when at the age of
eighteen I drew for the conscription and found
it was my fate to serve, I believe I never was
so happy in my life. I entered the cavalry;
and, in spite of the heavy duties and strict
discipline, it was a glorious time. It makes
me mad, Monsieur, when I think of the happy
days I have spent on the road, in barracks,
and in snug country-quarters, where there
was cider or wine for the asking; to find
myself in a solitary corner of great, thoughtless
Paris, sick and helpless. It would be
something to die out in the open fields like a
worn-out horse, or to be shot like a wounded
one. But this is terrible, and I am but thirty-eight."

We comforted him in the best way we could
with sage axioms of antique date, or more
lively stories of passing events; but I saw a
solitary tear creeping down the cheek of
Madame Panpan, even in the midst of a
quaint sally; and, under pretence of arranging