ne of M. Filon's stories
(not because we are quite sure it is the cleverest of them) with a view
to the more definite illustration of his method, therein.

Christopher Marteau was a warden of the corporation of Luthiers. He
dealt in musical instruments, as his father and grandfather had done
before him, at the sign of Saint Cecilia. With his wife, his only
child Phlipote, and Claude his apprentice, who was to marry Phlipote,
he occupied a good house of his own. Of course the disposition of the
young people, bred together from their childhood, does not at first
entirely concur with the parental arrangements. But the story tells,
reassuringly, how--to some extent how sadly--they came heartily to do
so. M. Marteau was no ordinary shopkeeper. The various distinguished
people who had fingered his clavecins, and turned over the [140] folios
of music, for half a century past, had left their memories behind them;
M. de Voltaire, for instance, who had caressed the head of Phlipote
with an aged, skeleton hand, leaving, apparently, no very agreeable
impression on the child, though her father delighted to recall the
incident, being himself a demi-philosophe. He went to church, that is
to say, only twice a year, on the Feast of St. Cecilia and on the
Sunday when the Luthiers offered the pain benit. It was his opinion
that everything in the State needed reform except the Corporations.
The relations of the husband to his affectionate, satiric,
pleasure-seeking wife, who knew so well all the eighteen theatres which
then existed in Paris, are treated with much quiet humour. On Sundays
the four set forth together for a country holiday. At such times
Phlipote would walk half-a-dozen paces in advance of her father and
mother, side by side with her intended. But they never talked to each
other: the hands, the eyes, never met. Of what was Phlipote dreaming?
and what was in the thoughts of Claude?

It happened one day that, like sister and brother, the lovers exchanged
confidences. "It [141] is not always," observes Phlipote, whom every
one excepting Claude on those occasions sought with admiring eyes--

"'It is not always one loves those one is told to love.'

"'What, have you, too, a secret, my little Phlipote?'

"'I too, Claude! Then what may be yours?'

"'Listen, Phlipote!' he answered. 'We don't wish to be husband and
wife, but we can be friends--good and faithful friends, helping each
other to change the decision of