and blood as cold as the elements themselves-for in the midst of that direful season was I born and abandoned by my parents!

It was on the last night of December, or rather at the hour when night and morning are at odds, just before the new year opened its eyes on the cold blue mist which still hung over the streets of Paris like the funeral pall of the year just dead-that the watchers of the Hospice in the Rue d'Enfer were summoned to the tour in the wall of the gate, by the loud ringing of the bell which announced that misery or sin were at the door, clamouring to deposit the unwelcome offspring of poverty or guilt.

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"Ca fait le dixième cette nuit," muttered old Jacques the porter, as he briskly turned the handle of the box which admitted the new-comers within the precincts of the Hospice; ma foi, c'est mon avis que le Bon Dieu aurait mieux fait de ne pas laisser enfanter des p'tits êtres dans un temps comme celui-ci; moi je suis gelé si je quitte pour un instant même le coin du feu; que feront donc ces p'tits innocents qui ne savent point s'echauffer du tout, du tout, pas même fumer une pipe! que les femmes prennent du plaisir à faire des enfans au milieu de l'hiver; au lieu d'attendre jusqu'à la belle saison. Mais ce sont des femmes, v'là la cause!"

On dirait

And with this liberal apostrophe to the disposition of the sex, which probably had its source in some recent domestic interference with his own high will, the old porter ceased from his labours, for the box had turned and I was in it.

He took me out with his accustomed care-for though his hands were horny his heart was tender; moreover, he had experience-only too much —and carried me into the lodge where the registry of arrivals was kept, in which mine was formally entered.

It ran thus:

'Hospice des Enfans Trouvés, 1, Janvier, 1814. No. X. Un enfant mâle; apparemment nouveau-né; chétif et fort petit; porte une etiquette au cou avec le nom 'Adrien Roux ;' linge fin; une tache noire sur l'epaule gauche; point d'autre signalement."

This formality gone through, I was put into a small thick flannel bag, from which my head only was allowed to escape, that I might breathe freely, and was carried across the wide court-yard to the receiving-room of the Hospice.

"Here's a pretty New Year's gift, Petronille," said the porter, placing me in the arms of a comely young woman; "you've had all your share of these jolies etrennes, I think, to-night."

"Yes, thank God," replied Petronille, "we must work for our living, and the Bon Dieu gives us enough. If Providence did not send these little creatures on earth, we might perhaps be left to starve."

"Hum!" returned Jacques, who was not prepared for this philosophical view of the question; "I was wondering only a few minutes since why they came at all—at any rate during this cold weather; mais, c'est bin vrai-if there were no little children there could be no nurses-no nurses no Hospice-no Hospice no porter-bah! things must remain as they are, I suppose.'

"Le Bon Dieu," said the kind nurse, "allows of no wrong without some good to make it even. Ah, le pauvre chéri," added she, balancing me in her seems very small and weakly; he must weigh very little."

"he arms,

To the process of weighing, the test which generally decides the infant's chance of life, I was immediately submitted. A six-pound weight carried the day against me, and Petronille looked wistfully in my face, while she scanned the probability of my surviving. To supply the place of nature, she gave me her tenderest care; I was dressed in a little checked night-gown, swathed with linen bands, and then laid out beside my nine predecessors (all heavier and more vigorous than I), our ten heads looking like so many small Swedish turnips, on a broad mattrass, spread on a frame which sloped gently upwards from before a very large fire, under whose influence we all, no doubt, became tolerably comfortable.

When the famous son of Jeanne de Navarre was born, his grandfather, old Henri d'Albret, in the certain expectation that he would turn out a hero, put a clove of garlic in his mouth, and moistened his lips with good old wine of Jurançon, from that pleasant côteau which spreads its golden treasures in front of the old towers of Pau. How it throve with him all the world knows! Now, whether it arises from indifference on the part of the directors of the Hospice des Enfans Trouvés as to the development of heroic qualities in the children whom they succour, or whether the modern Frenchman be a tenderer plant than the young Béarnaise, I cannot pretend to decide. Certain it is that neither wine nor garlic, nor even the symbolical "tyrelarigot" swallowed by the great Gargantua just after his birth, were the aliments on which my first step towards gathering strength depended; but, in lieu of these, frequent small doses of eau sucrée, the elixir vitæ of France, were carefully administered by the attentive Petronille.

In the course of my career I have familiarised myself with the habits of most nations. I have drunk port with the Englishman, Schiedam with the Hollander, beer with the German, pure agua fresca with the Spaniard, and all with a good grace; the vintages of France prevent me —if I had the will-from saying any thing heretical of the beverages of my own country, but the amor patria itself has not been able to reconcile me to the taste of eau sucrée. In my hopeless state as I lay on the mattrass, too weak to scream, and too tightly bandaged to kick-an Egyptian mummy might as well have attempted either feat-I swallowed so much of this fluid from the long spout of the china vessel held over me, that unconsciously I may, perhaps, have imbibed my aversion to it from that moment. However, not to be ungrateful, the innocent mixture was of service in its small way, and sent me to sleep; when I awoke other food awaited me, and thus between eating and sleeping, and some compunction on the part of nature, shamed out of her supine consent to my being prematurely cut off, I made good my claim to become a tenant of the dwelling my soul had crept into for the long lease of "three score years and ten."

This improvement continued after my removal from the Créche-as the general reception-room is called-and in a short time, except, perhaps, to the eye I was more delicate than those around me, I gave as fair a promise of being able to cling to life as the most robust of my companions. But, without disparagement to the care of the attendants in the Hospice, there still remained the possibility that some incautious nurse, in the absence of my especial guardian, Petronille, might have given me an over-dose of syrup of poppies, as it befel in one day to no less than six of my nine companions. I was, however, saved from

this fate, and such other accidents as infant helplessness is heir to in a crowded establishment, where the safety in multitude does not apply to the patients, by being formally made over to the good woman in whose hands I had been first placed, and who, like many others, had come from a short distance in the country to seek for a nursling. This custom, though it generally entails a life of hardship on the child, and sometimes turns out worse than the first abandonment, makes for it a home of its own. No woman ever nurses a child without feeling affection for itoften a very strong one; insensibly it takes its place in the ménage as if born to fill it, and when the time comes for the administration of the Hospice to reclaim the infant for the orphan department, to part with it is as great a source of grief as the loss of a legitimate offspring.

Petronille, who loved me with a mother's affection, was not exposed to this severe test. At the expiration of the customary two years, my slight frame and a recent malady, afforded a pretext for my being still confided to her care, and I eventually fell into the category of those children with whom a certain sum is given by the Hospice to bring them up as farm-labourers, in which condition it is that the risk is run of all the previous care being more than neutralised by neglect or brutalitythe farmer to whom the boy is apprenticed being no longer kept in check by the surveillance of the Paris establishment.

It is time I should say something of the family with which I was domiciliated, and under whose roof I passed the first ten years of my life.

The husband of Petronille was not a regular farmer, though he periodically tilled himself the three or four acres of land which stretched in a long strip behind the house in which he dwelt; neither was he a regular marchand de bœufs, though he bought and sold beasts as occasion served at the market of Poissy; neither was he a professed horse-dealer, though it rarely happened that the stalls in his écurie were without at least two or three occupants; he might better be described as one who combined the three occupations in a desultory way, according as the times were propitious or inclination led him. And to these he superadded the casual occupations to which a man naturally betakes himself when he has no pursuit that altogether engrosses his attention; thus it caused him no remorse of conscience to poach a little when the markets were slack, or to supply the Parisians with articles of consumption which were not destined to pay the Octroi duty; nor did he hesitate to undertake the cure of sick animals, to "nourish" them, according to the established phrase, as effectually, perhaps, though it may be not quite so tenderly, as the little enfant trouvé was nourished by his wife Petronille. Michel Bruneau, such was his name, was not a bad fellow after all, albeit some of his propensities led him now and then en dehors de la loi; but then he used to say, ،، C'est pas moi qui avons fait les loix, dans ce cas là j'les aurions observé très r'ligieusement," and the emphasis which he laid on this last word afforded ample proof of the sincerity of his intentions. Take him on the whole, therefore, allowing for the temptations which beset the path of one who dabbles in horseflesh, deals now and then in dogs, frequents the haunts of cattle merchants, and who cannot be induced to believe that the cheap approvisionnement of his customers (in the shape of a little smuggling and poaching) is other than a virtue, and you have as fair a specimen of his class, in the person of Michel Bruneau, as you might have found in the arrondissement. He was a tolerably good-looking, large boned, strong Jan.-VOL. LXXIX. NO. CCCXIII.

H

limbed man, somewhat coarse in his manners, and rough, but not violent, in his mood; if he gave a heavy blow occasionally to some unlucky urchin, or garçon d'écurie, the atonement was as prompt as the act which called for it, and, to do him justice, he was more liberal of gifts than cuffs, and when in a good humour scattered the gros sous about with an open hand.

His wife, Petronille, was one of a very different order. Endowed with the most perfect self-denial, and the most patient, enduring courage, the vicissitudes of fortune consequent upon Michel's uncertain calling, never affected her conduct. Prudent when the sun shone upon them, she had no need to be penurious when the sky was overcast, for she always contrived to have enough in store to meet any temporary difficulty. She met adversity more than half-way, not by prognosticating its arrival, but by silently and unobservedly preparing for its reception "de manière que,' as Michel often said, "c'est pas possible de surprendre not' femme." Her disposition was most gentle, her heart full of affectionate warmth, and her habits lively and cheerful. She was by no means illiterate (the same could not be said of her husband); on the contrary, her education had been cared for in her youth, for her father, an épicier once in a tolerable way of business in the faubourg St. Denis at Paris before he unfortunately failed, had been able to afford her the means, and by the time she was eighteen, and kept her father's books, and superintended his household affairs, she was looked upon as clever a girl as any in the faubourg, and prettier certainly than nine-tenths of them, facts which few disputed, except the modistes, the demoiselles Marie and Clotilde Blondeau, who lived opposite, and who, on the strength of their calling, and endowed by nature with very black eyes, very high colours, and a large stock of assurance, arrogated to themselves not only all the beauty but all the intellect of the quartier. The critical said-for even cynics are cynicised sous cape-that if Mademoiselle Marie had not been quite so tall and stout, and if her upper lip had been a little less shaded with the hue of the raven's wing, she might have possessed strong claims to universal admiration; and of Mademoiselle Clotilde they were known to observe, that although long limbs, large hands, and the gauntness of figure which indicates strength, are doubtless very useful attributes in a hard-working ménage, they are not altogether the qualities essential to a fashionable modiste. The male sex seemed mostly to be of this opinion, as far, at least as any serious demonstration went, for the demoiselles Blondeau, flirts à l'outrance, though surrounded by danglers, had never received an offer when Petronille Martel was married to Michel Bruneau. They first met at the fête in the park of St. Cloud, where they danced together, and straightway fell in love. He was handsome, and at that time well to do, having some little patrimony besides a pied à terre at St. Germain-enLaye, where he resided, at no great distance from the forest; and the Sieur Martel made no objection to his daughter's choice. It need scarcely be said, that the event excited the envy of the demoiselles Blondeau, though they affected to treat the match with contempt, the bridegroom, in their opinion, being nothing better than a "rustre" and a "manant;" and as for the bride, what she was had long been settled. It unfortunately happened, that the predictions, not to say the wishes of the envious, came to pass, and in the course of three short years the demoiselles Blondeau, had the satisfaction of seeing that their prophetic announcement of evil days in store for the young married couple were in a fair way of being fulfilled.

The Sieur Martel whose savings and profits had been, as he was led to suppose, accumulating in the hands of an agent, suddenly discovered the roguery of the man whom he had trusted, and died a bankrupt. Michel Bruneau had lived freely, and speculated unwisely in each of his triune occupations, and his heaviest losses fell upon him at the very time of his father-in-law's death, so that from comparative affluence, he found himself reduced to the verge of absolute poverty, with an increasing family, and all the concomitants which vex the dwellings of the poor. Till that period, Petronille had only shown the gentleness of her nature; she now displayed its courage and firmness, and by her care, things were kept together, and the family was enabled to struggle on without assistance. Their condition was known and variously commented on in the faubourg St. Denis, but without being indifferent to the good wishes of her friends, or the sneers of those who thought less kindly of her, she had too much justifiable pride, and her self-reliance was too strong to suffer her to become a claimant on the bounty of others. She worked hard, therefore, and by degrees, in some respects, retrieved her husband's position : her own prudence, could not, however, suffice for his want of it, and shortly before the time I came into the world-or rather into the Hospice, for that was the only world that acknowledged me-matters had again gone so badly with him, that they were reduced to every shift to keep the wolf from the door. Michel, unknown to his wife, acquired a very decided penchant for the pursuits of a braconnier, and, as he lived near the forest preserves, and luck favoured him, he turned his love of field-sports to tolerable account. Petronille, who had just lost an infant at the breast (the fifth child of an union of which four survived), resolved à l'insçu de son mari, to replace the child, and make a little profit by the act to the advantage of her family; so feigning a visit of a few days to a friend in Paris, she presented herself at the Hospice des Enfans Trouvés, as a nurse in want of a nourisson, was accepted, and in a few days returned to St. Germain-enLaye with her charge. Michel was at first somewhat astounded at this unexpected increase to his family, but apart from my advent being a real benefit to the ménage, for the payment is sufficiently liberal, he was too good-natured to thwart his wife's inclinations.

"Voyez vous," he observed to a neighbour, "not' femme a perdu son p'tit, faut bien trouvér un r'mplaçant, ça n'aime pas d'etr' privê de la sorte."

It was under these auspices that I became one of the family of Michel Bruneau.

CHAP. II.

THE MAT DE COCAGNE.

I HAVE said that four arrows were yet left in the quiver, the possessor of which, if it be full, is said to be blessed. This is an Oriental simile rarely estimated at its full value in the West, and very little appreciated in France, where the great art of domestic economy lies in the endeavours to keep down the number of children, partly with an eye to the present, and partly with reference to the future, the succession being equally divided amongst the survivors. The family of Michel Bruneau consisted of two boys and two girls: Philippe, the eldest, was at the time of my joining them, about ten years of age; Josephine came next, a year and a half

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