She had a brother, a clerk in Derville's law office.

Left orphans and very poor, and devoted to each other, the brother and sister had seen life such as it is in Paris.

The one wished to be a lawyer that he might support his sister, and he lived on ten sous a day; the other had coldly resolved to be a dancer, and to profit by her beauty as much as by her legs that she might buy a practice for her brother.

Outside of their feeling for each other, and of their mutual life and interests, everything was to them, as it once was to the Romans and the Hebrews, barbaric, outlandish, and hostile.

This generous affection, which nothing ever lessened, explained Mariette to those who knew her intimately.
The brother and sister were living at this time on the eighth floor of a house in the Vieille rue du Temple.