ess
of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, to our friend's garret. La Palferine,
seeing her, said, 'You have made a peeress of yourself I know. But it
is too late, Claudine; every one is talking just now about the Southern
Cross, I should like it see it!'

"'I will get it for you.'

"La Palferine burst into a peal of Homeric laughter.

"'Most distinctly,' he returned, 'I do _not_ wish to have a woman as
ignorant as a carp for my mistress, a woman that springs like a flying
fish from the green-room of the Opera to Court, for I should like to see
you at the Court of the Citizen King.'

"She turned to me.

"'What is the Southern Cross?' she asked, in a sad, downcast voice.

"I was struck with admiration for this indomitable love, outdoing the
most ingenious marvels of fairy tales in real life--a love that would
spring over a precipice to find a roc's egg, or to gather the singing
flower. I explained that the Southern Cross was a nebulous constellation
even brighter than the Milky Way, arranged in the form of a cross, and
that it could only be seen in southern latitudes.

"'Very well, Charles, let us go,' said she.

"La Palferine, ferocious though he was, had tears in his eyes; but what
a look there was in Claudine's face, what a note in her voice! I have
seen nothing like the thing that followed, not even in the supreme touch
of a great actor's art; nothing to compare with her movement when she
saw the hard eyes softened in tears; Claudine sank upon her knees
and kissed La Palferine's pitiless hand. He raised her with his grand
manner, his 'Rusticoli air,' as he calls it--'There, child!' he said, 'I
will do something for you; I will put you--in my will.'

"Well," concluded Nathan, "I ask myself sometimes whether du Bruel is
really deceived. Truly there is nothing more comic, nothing stranger
than the sight of a careless young fellow ruling a married couple, his
slightest whims received as law, the weightiest decisions revoked at a
word from him. That dinner incident, as you can see, is repeated times
without number, it interferes with important matters. Still, but for
Claudine's caprices, du Bruel would be de Cursy still, one vaudevillist
among five hundred; whereas he is in the House of Peers."

"You will change the names, I hope!" said Nathan, addressing Mme. de la
Baudraye.

"I should think so! I have only set names to the masks for you. My dear
Nathan," she added in the poet's ear, "I know another case on which