“Maman veut du feu!” said a little girl, as she pushed open the door of an Irish shanty, and stood with a shovel in her hand.

“Was there ever the like!” said Bridget, resting her fists on her hips. “Now this be’s the third blessed day that the child has been here for coals and said that same thing!”

The child went quietly to the hearth, took some coals on her shovel, and departed.

“I’se been thinking it isn’t our language she’s a speaking, though she’s such a bit of a thing one couldn’t tell rightly what she’d be afther? I’ll follow her, belike she’s in mischief, though it isn’t in my heart to think ill of such a purty little cratur!”

So away ran Bridget, down one pair of stairs and up another, following the child, who pushed open a door with her shovel; and there on the naked bed she saw Madame Eboli, with no covering but a shawl. Madame Eboli spoke, but so faintly that Bridget could not understand her; she then laid Bridget’s hand on her forehead, when the Irish woman instantly perceived that she was dying with fever.

Bridget flew to a poor friend of hers, whom she knew was attended by an eminent French physician of the city. He had been kind, she thought, and done much for my sick friend, why should he not do the same for this woman, who was also in distress? Fortunately he was at the bedside of his patient when Bridget arrived.

“Och, sir! an there’s a poor woman in Seventeenth street, what’s a terrible faver on her, and no clothes to her bed, and nothing to ate; maybe yees’d go and see her a bit! She’s a nice looking woman, and got as purty a child as ever I see.”

“I will come to her directly,” said Doctor Breton.

“I think she’s a foreigner, maybe yees could talk with her, being one yoursel; she’s so wake, poor thing! there’s no telling what she’d be saying.”

It was but a short ten minutes after Bridget’s summons when the doctor opened the door of Madame Eboli’s room. The little girl was crying, and making vain efforts to turn her mother toward her. As the child spoke in French, he addressed the mother in that language, giving her at the same time, some reviving medicine. After taking it, she was able to give him an account of herself, and also to tell him of her anxiety concerning Eleonore.

The doctor left the house, promising to return in an hour or two. Proceeding to the hospital, he procured an entrance for her, and by the afternoon she had been carried there, placed on a nice clean bed, and her wants well attended to—thanks to the generous kindness of a Christian heart! He then exerted himself in behalf of the little one. He related the strange history of the mother to all his French patients, and raised a subscription to pay for the child’s board after her mother’s death, which was evidently near.

On his way to the hospital one morning, he over-took one Mr. Carron, and told him Madame Eboli’s sad story, asking his aid. They had by that time reached the door of the hospital, and Mr. Carron accepted Doctor Breton’s invitation to enter and see the little Eleonore.

Mr. Carron was a very impulsive man. He never hesitated, never reflected, (never asked his wife’s opinion, as every reasonable man should,) but went into raptures over little Eleonore’s beauty, and offered on the spot to adopt the child as his own—an offer that was thankfully accepted by the poor mother.

It was but a week after this, that the doctor found Madame Eboli much worse. On leaving her he requested to be called should any change take place in her symptoms.

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