In vain.  The feeble light of the lamp had gone out in the foul air; and the darkness was frightful.

Nothing could be seen but the reddish glow of the charcoal, which was slowly going out under a little heap of white ashes in two small stoves.  No one ventured to enter.

But Papa Ravinet had not gone so far to stop now, and remain in the passage.

“Where is the window?” he asked the concierge.

“On the right there.”

“Very well; I’ll open it.”

And boldly the strange man plunged into the dark room; and almost instantly the noise of breaking glass was heard.  A moment later, and the air in the room had become once more fit for breathing, and everybody rushed in.

Alas! it was the death-rattle which M. Ravinet had heard.

On the bed, on a thin mattress, without blankets or bedclothes, lay a young girl about twenty years old, dressed in a wretched black merino dress, stretched out at full-length, stiff, lifeless.

The women sobbed aloud.

“To die so young!” they said over and over again, “and to die thus.”

In the meantime the merchant had gone up to the bed, and examined the poor girl.

“She is not dead yet!” he cried.  “No, she cannot be dead!  Come, ladies, come here and help the poor child, till the doctor comes.”

And then, with strange self-possession, he told them what to do for the purpose of recalling her to life.

“Give her air,” he said, “plenty of air; try to get some air into her lungs.  Cut open her dress; pour some vinegar on her face; rub her with some woollen stuff.”

He issued his orders, and they obeyed him readily, although they had no hope of success.

“Poor child!” said one of the women.  “No doubt she was crossed in love.”

“Or she was starving,” whispered another.

There was no doubt that poverty, extreme poverty, had ruled in that miserable chamber:  the traces were easily seen all around.  The whole furniture consisted of a bed, a chest of drawers, and two chairs.  There were no curtains at the window, no dresses in the trunk, not a ribbon in the drawers.  Evidently everything that could be sold had been sold, piece by piece, little by little.  The mattresses had followed the dresses,—­first the wool, handful by handful, then the covering.

Too proud to complain, and cut off from society by bashfulness, the poor girl who was lying there had evidently gone through all the stages of suffering which the shipwrecked mariner endures, who floats, resting on a stray spar in the great ocean.

Papa Ravinet was thinking of all this, when a paper lying on the bureau attracted his eye.  He took it up.  It was the last will of the poor girl, and ran thus:—­

“Let no one be accused; I die voluntarily.  I beg Mrs. Chevassat will carry the two letters which I enclose to their addresses.  She will be paid whatever I may owe her.  Henrietta.”