the advocate, no more was said about it. Mademoiselle de Watteville
impatiently looked forward to bedtime. She had promised herself to
wake at between two and three in the morning, and to look at Albert's
dressing-room windows. When the hour came, she felt almost pleasure in
gazing at the glimmer from the lawyer's candles that shone through the
trees, now almost bare of their leaves. By the help of the strong sight
of a young girl, which curiosity seems to make longer, she saw Albert
writing, and fancied she could distinguish the color of the furniture,
which she thought was red. From the chimney above the roof rose a thick
column of smoke.

"While all the world is sleeping, he is awake--like God!" thought she.

The education of girls brings with it such serious problems--for the
future of a nation is in the mother--that the University of France long
since set itself the task of having nothing to do with it. Here is one
of these problems: Ought girls to be informed on all points? Ought their
minds to be under restraint? It need not be said that the religious
system is one of restraint. If you enlighten them, you make them demons
before their time; if you keep them from thinking, you end in the sudden
explosion so well shown by Moliere in the character of Agnes, and you
leave this suppressed mind, so fresh and clear-seeing, as swift and
as logical as that of a savage, at the mercy of an accident. This
inevitable crisis was brought on in Mademoiselle de Watteville by the
portrait which one of the most prudent Abbes of the Chapter of Besancon
imprudently allowed himself to sketch at a dinner party.

Next morning, Mademoiselle de Watteville, while dressing, necessarily
looked out at Albert Savaron walking in the garden adjoining that of the
Hotel de Rupt.

"What would have become of me," thought she, "if he had lived anywhere
else? Here I can, at any rate, see him.--What is he thinking about?"

Having seen this extraordinary man, though at a distance, the only man
whose countenance stood forth in contrast with crowds of Besancon faces
she had hitherto met with, Rosalie at once jumped at the idea of getting
into his house, of ascertaining the reason of so much mystery, of
hearing that eloquent voice, of winning a glance from those fine eyes.
All this she set her heart on, but how could she achieve it?

All that day she drew her needle through her embroidery with the
obtuse concentration of a girl who, like Agnes, seems