If Jerome, then at the height of his success, was pinched for money, his sister, clothed in serge, and her fingers roughened by the coarse thread with which she sewed her bags, would give him a few louis.

In Brigitte's eyes Jerome was the handsomest and most charming man in the whole French Empire.

To keep house for this cherished brother, to be initiated into the secrets of Lindor and Don Juan, to be his handmaiden, his spaniel, was Brigitte's dream.

She immolated herself lovingly to an idol whose selfishness, always great, was enormously increased by her self-sacrifice.

She sold her business to her fore-woman for fifteen thousand francs and came to live with Thuillier in the rue d'Argenteuil, where she made herself the mother, protectress, and servant of this spoiled child of women.