“I took out from a fold of my dress, where I had kept it constantly hid, the twenty-franc-piece I had received; and, as I was hungry, I entered a sort of eating and lodging house, where I had occasionally taken a meal.  The proprietor was a kind-hearted man.  When I had told him my situation, he invited me to remain with him until I could find something better.  On Sundays and Mondays the customers were plenty; and he was obliged to take an extra servant.  He offered me that work to do, promising, in exchange, my lodging and one meal a day.  I accepted.  The next day being Sunday, I commenced the arduous duties of a bar-maid in a low drinking house.  My pourboires amounted sometimes to five or ten francs; I had my board and lodging free; and at the end of three months I had been able to provide myself with some decent clothing, and was commencing to accumulate a little reserve, when the lodging-house keeper, whose business had unexpectedly developed itself to a considerable extent, concluded to engage a man-waiter, and urged me to look elsewhere for work.  I did so.  An old neighbor of ours told me of a situation at Bougival, where she said I would be very comfortable.  Overcoming my repugnance, I applied, and was accepted.  I was to get thirty francs a month.

“The place might have been a good one.  There were only three in the family,—­the gentleman and his wife, and a son of twenty-five.  Every morning, father and son left for Paris by the first train, and only came home to dinner at about six o’clock.  I was therefore alone all day with the woman.  Unfortunately, she was a cross and disagreeable person, who, never having had a servant before, felt an insatiable desire of showing and exercising her authority.  She was, moreover, extremely suspicious, and found some pretext to visit regularly my trunks once or twice a week, to see if I had not concealed some of her napkins or silver spoons.  Having told her that I had once been a laundress, she made me wash and iron all the clothes in the house, and was forever accusing me of using too much soap and too much coal.  Still I liked the place well enough; and I had a little room in the attic; which I thought charming, and where I spent delightful evenings reading or sewing.

“But luck was against me.  The young gentleman of the house took a fancy to me, and determined to make me his mistress.  I discouraged him in a way; but he persisted in his loathsome attention, until one night he broke into my room, and I was compelled to shout for help with all my might, before I could get rid of him.

“The next day I left that house; but I tried in vain to find another situation in Bougival.  I resolved then to seek a place in Paris.  I had a big trunk full of good clothes, and about a hundred francs of savings; and I felt no anxiety.

“When I arrived in Paris, I went straight to an intelligence-office.  I was extremely well received by a very affable old woman who promised to get me a good place, and, in the mean time, solicited me to board with her.  She kept a sort of boarding-house for servants out of place; and there were there some fifty or sixty of us, who slept at night in long dormitories.