158] FOREIGN LIFE 490
"Did you ever hear of Doubs? \Ve rame through it \sterday, and it certainly seemed to us the most inelan-loly, ill-fated villages we had ever seen. Some time ago icre lived there a boy, whose step-mother was very eruel
him — so eruel that his whole aim and object in life was
obtain money enough to set up for himself and escape om her tyranny. At last be succeeded, and leaving his tlier's house with his heart full of bitterness, he invested s savings in a partnership with the owner of the village ft\ where he kept the accounts. One day his partner eused him of not giving him a fair share of the profits. Ins made him perfectly frantic so furious (hat he detcr-ined to avenge himself by nothing less than tin* total kstruction of his native* place! lie began by setting lire
his eaf<1, but tin* alarm was scarcely given when it was seovcrcd that almost every other house was in flames. tie inhabitants hurried from their beds and were barely >le to save themselves, their houses, cattle, and goods •fishing at one blow. Only a few houses and the church raped, in which the fugitives took refuge, and were ginning to collect their energies, when, after ten dayn, e tint broke out again in the night, and the rent of the Huge was consumed with all it contained, including a ild of four yuan*, -old. Between the* two fires cholera d broken out, HO that numbers perished from pestilence?
well an exposure. The author of sill the misery wiw ken and transported, but the town in only now beginning rise again from its ruins, and the people to raise their
On reaching Paris, we found Italimii and my sister the Hotel d'Oxford et Cambridge Orently to my lief, my mother decided that, an she was in perfect ?alth and well supplied with visitors, it was an .mirable opportunity for my remaining abroad to irn French : this I was only too thankful for, as