quite a breach.  All through that afternoon, in spite of the constantly recurring downpours, a scraggy girl remained stationed near that breach, wrapped to her eyes in the ragged remnants of an old shawl, doubtless for protection against the cold.  She seemed to be waiting for some chance meeting, the advent it might be of some charitably disposed wayfarer.  And her impatience was manifest, for while keeping close to the fence like some animal lying in wait, she continually peered through the breach, thrusting out her tapering weasel’s head and watching yonder, in the direction of the Champ de Mars.

Hours went by, three o’clock struck, and then such dark clouds rolled over the livid sky, that the girl herself became blurred, obscured, as if she were some mere piece of wreckage cast into the darkness.  At times she raised her head and watched the sky darken, with eyes that glittered as if to thank it for throwing so dense a gloom over that deserted corner, that spot so fit for an ambuscade.  And just as the rain had once more begun to fall, a lady could be seen approaching, a lady clad in black, quite black, under an open umbrella.  While seeking to avoid the puddles in her path, she walked on quickly, like one in a hurry, who goes about her business on foot in order to save herself the expense of a cab.

From some precise description which she had obtained, Toinette, the girl, appeared to recognize this lady from afar off.  She was indeed none other than Madame Angelin, coming quickly from the Rue de Lille, on her way to the homes of her poor, with the little chain of her little bag encircling her wrist.  And when the girl espied the gleaming steel of that little chain, she no longer had any doubts, but whistled softly.  And forthwith cries and moans arose from a dim corner of the vacant ground, while she herself began to wail and call distressfully.

Astonished, disturbed by it all, Madame Angelin stopped short.

“What is the matter, my girl?” she asked.

“Oh! madame, my brother has fallen yonder and broken his leg.”

“What, fallen?  What has he fallen from?”

“Oh! madame, there’s a shed yonder where we sleep, because we haven’t any home, and he was using an old ladder to try to prevent the rain from pouring in on us, and he fell and broke his leg.”

Thereupon the girl burst into sobs, asking what was to become of them, stammering that she had been standing there in despair for the last ten minutes, but could see nobody to help them, which was not surprising with that terrible rain falling and the cold so bitter.  And while she stammered all this, the calls for help and the cries of pain became louder in the depths of the waste ground.

Though Madame Angelin was terribly upset, she nevertheless hesitated, as if distrustful.

“You must run to get a doctor, my poor child,” said she, “I can do nothing.”

“Oh! but you can, madame; come with me, I pray you.  I don’t know where there’s a doctor to be found.  Come with me, and we will pick him up, for I can’t manage it by myself; and at all events we can lay him in the shed, so that the rain sha’n’t pour down on him.”