, as the
expression of infinite tenderness. The admirers of those ancient tunes
will recognize the words, composed by the great king to this air, which
were taken, probably, from some folk-song to which his cradle had been
rocked among the mountains of Bearn.

"Dawn, approach,
I pray thee;
It gladdens me to see thee;
The maiden
Whom I love
Is rosy, rosy like thee;
The rose itself,
Dew-laden,
Has not her freshness;
Ermine has not
Her pureness;
Lilies have not
Her whiteness."

After naively revealing the thought of his heart in song, Etienne
contemplated the sea, saying to himself: "There is my bride; the only
love for me!" Then he sang too other lines of the canzonet,--

"She is fair
Beyond compare,"--

repeating it to express the imploring poesy which abounds in the
heart of a timid young man, brave only when alone. Dreams were in that
undulating song, sung, resung, interrupted, renewed, and hushed at last
in a final modulation, the tones of which died away like the lingering
vibrations of a bell.

At this moment a voice, which he fancied was that of a siren rising from
the sea, a woman's voice, repeated the air he had sung, but with all the
hesitations of a person to whom music is revealed for the first time.
He recognized the stammering of a heart born into the poesy of harmony.
Etienne, to whom long study of his own voice had taught the language of
sounds, in which the soul finds resources greater than speech to express
its thoughts, could divine the timid amazement that attended these
attempts. With what religious and subtile admiration had that unknown
being listened to him! The stillness of the atmosphere enabled him to
hear every sound, and he quivered at the distant rustle of the folds of
a gown. He was amazed,--he, whom all emotions produced by terror sent to
the verge of death--to feel within him the healing, balsamic sensation
which his mother's coming had formerly brought to him.

"Come, Gabrielle, my child," said the voice of Beauvouloir, "I forbade
you to stay upon the seashore after sundown; you must come in, my
daughter."

"Gabrielle," said Etienne to himself. "Oh! the pretty name!"

Beauvouloir presently came to him, rousing his young master from one of
those meditations which resemble dreams. It was night, and the moon was
rising.

"Monseigneur," said the physician, "you have not been out to-day, and it
is not wise of you."

"An