Mademoiselle Francine was the first and only mistress of Jacques, who did not die very old, for he was scarcely three and twenty when his father would have had him laid naked in the earth.

The story of his love was told me by Jacques himself when he was No.

14 and I was No.
16 in the Sainte Victoire ward--an ugly spot to die in.
Ah reader! Before I begin this story, which would be a touching one if I could tell it as it was told to me by my friend Jacques, let me take a pull or two at the old clay pipe he gave me on the day that the doctor forbade its use by him.

Yet at night, when the male nurse was asleep, my friend Jacques would borrow his pipe with a little tobacco from me.

It is so wearisome at night in those vast wards, when one suffers and cannot sleep.
"Only two or three whiffs," he would say, and I would let him have it; and Sister Sainte-Genevieve did not seem to notice the smoke when she made her round.