vered with
an old large-flowered Haarlem tapestry; in the center of this table
was a long-necked stone bottle, in which were irises and lilies of the
valley; at each end of this table was a young girl.

The position of these two young people was singular; they might have
been taken for two boarders escaped from a convent. One of them, with
both elbows on the table, and a pen in her hand, was tracing characters
upon a sheet of fine Dutch paper; the other, kneeling upon a chair,
which allowed her to advance her head and bust over the back of it to
the middle of the table, was watching her companion as she wrote, or
rather hesitated to write.

Thence the thousand cries, the thousand railleries, the thousand laughs,
one of which, more brilliant than the rest, had startled the birds in
the gardens, and disturbed the slumbers of Monsieur's guards.

We are taking portraits now; we shall be allowed, therefore, we hope, to
sketch the two last of this chapter.

The one who was leaning in the chair--that is to say, the joyous, the
laughing one--was a beautiful girl of from eighteen to twenty, with
brown complexion and brown hair, splendid, from eyes which sparkled
beneath strongly-marked brows, and particularly from her teeth, which
seemed to shine like pearls between her red coral lips. Her every
movement seemed the accent of a sunny nature, she did not walk--she
bounded.

The other, she who was writing, looked at her turbulent companion with
an eye as limpid, as pure, and as blue as the azure of the day. Her
hair, of a shaded fairness, arranged with exquisite taste, fell in silky
curls over her lovely mantling cheeks; she passed across the paper a
delicate hand, whose thinness announced her extreme youth. At each burst
of laughter that proceeded from her friend, she raised, as if annoyed,
her white shoulders in a poetical and mild manner, but they were wanting
in that richfulness of mold which was likewise to be wished in her arms
and hands.

"Montalais! Montalais!" said she at length, in a voice soft and
caressing as a melody, "you laugh too loud--you laugh like a man! You
will not only draw the attention of messieurs the guards, but you will
not hear Madame's bell when Madame rings."

This admonition neither made the young girl called Montalais cease to
laugh and gesticulate. She only replied: "Louise, you do not speak as
you think, my dear; you know that messieurs the guards, as you call
them, have only just commence