As the day continued Nanette circled the town getting more and more ragged as the morning wore on until her few remaining baguettes were stale. Deciding that she could not sell anymore stale bread, she went back to her shop to make more bread for the afternoon rush.

It was a few minutes before Nanette was back at her shop that doubled as her home, but she wasn't three steps in the door before Marie ran to her.

"Nanette please tell me you made plenty of money!"

"Well not a huge amount, but I sold a couple of loaves," Nanette said taken aback by her urgency.

"The landlord came to the shop. He said that we've missed the rent and he'll take the shop if we don't pay!" Marie yelled nearly in tears. Marie was a young girl about sixteen but she had old wise eyes despite her beautiful young face that was surrounded by golden a large number of golden curls. The sight of her in this state tore at Nanette's kind heart.

"Did he say how much rent we owed?"

"No but he's in the back room," Marie whispered trying not to be overheard.

"Ok I'll go to the room," Nanette responded heading towards the back room. "Hello Monsieur," Nanette said to the elderly gentleman.

"Bonjour," the man said curtly, "I understand that you have not been paying your rent,"

"Well I had tried but it was difficult to sell the bread enough to pay. How much is the debt?" Nanette said in a pleading voice. "If you could just give me a little while to gather my funds…"

"I'm sorry I can not do that. You have twenty-four hours before we take your house, here is your bill" the man said

"Please I…I…ok I'll have the money," Nanette said tears coming to her dark green eyes.

"Very well, I'll see you tomorrow," He said as he got up and left. Once he was out the door Marie came in.

"Mademoiselle what are we going to do?" She said in an anguished tone.

"You're going home and I'm going to close up shop and see if I even have a possibility of keeping my shop," Nanette said forcefully.

"But…" Marie started but seeing the determined look on her face stopped and said, "Very well, good bye," she said choking on the last word. As she left the shop Nanette plopped herself down on the couch.

"How…how am I going to pay this debt?" Nanette cried. She got up and walked to the door to lock it. She looked down at the bill and gasped. 75 Francs! How can I pay that much! She dropped the bill and ran into her room crying.

*

As the sun was setting Nanette got out of her bed and walked into the bathroom. When she looked in the mirror she saw what an afternoon of crying had done to her. Her hair brown hair was plastered to her pale face and her green eyes were red from crying. After cleaning herself up she went back into the main shop. Immediately she walked over to the hanger that held her coat that she had worn all day and put it on. Feeling the money in her pocket Nanette walked out the door and into the night looking for a way to stop the pain, and then it came to her the local tavern.