There were three of us born of my father's second marriage,--Hortense, who's the youngest, Leonie, who's dead, and myself, Pauline, the eldest.

And of my father's first marriage I've still a brother Eugene Toussaint, who is ten years older than me and is an engineer like Salvat, and has been working ever since the war in the same establishment, the Grandidier factory, only a hundred steps away in the Rue Marcadet.

The misfortune is that he had a stroke lately.

As for me, my eyes are done for; I ruined them by working ten hours a day at fine needlework.

And now I can no longer even try to mend anything without my eyes filling with water till I can't see at all.