And complimenting my host thereon, I found that he had, there in the primeval forest, an admirable French cook, to whom I begged to be introduced at once.

Poor fellow! A little lithe Parisian, not thirty years old, he had got thither by a wild road.

Cook to some good bourgeois family in Paris, he had fallen in love with his master's daughter, and she with him.

And when their love was hopeless, and discovered, the two young foolish things, not having--as is too common in France--the fear of God before their eyes, could think of no better resource than to shut themselves up with a pan of lighted charcoal, and so go they knew not-whither.

The poor girl went--and was found dead.