).

"Pray take care!" cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
pillar.

But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon's
Mameluke held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green velvet
and gold stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind the rest
of the horses in readiness for the Emperor's staff.

The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd
in the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the
two veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into
the palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his hand
a mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little service
he had done her, or did she tell him, "After all, I shall really see
you?" She bent her head quite graciously in response to the respectful
bow by which the officer took leave of them before he vanished.

The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He
seemed to have left the two young people together for some purpose of
his own, and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her
into false security by appearing to give his whole attention to the
magnificent sight in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie's eyes turned
to her father with the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he
answered her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had
followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that passed
was lost upon him.

"What a grand sight!" said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
father's hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the spectacle
in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from thousands
upon thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder. Another array of
sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old noble and
his daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the railings which
crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a line parallel with
the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass, variegated by the
colors of the women's dresses, traced out a bold line across the
centre of the Place du Carrousel, filling in the fourth side of a vast
parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the Palace of the Tuileries