he government of his country is bound to keep within him for
the secrets of others. After you have paid your respects and compliments
to Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon, to Monsieur and Madame Dumay, and
to Monsieur Gobenheim if he is at the Chalet, and as soon as quiet
is restored, Monsieur Dumay will take you aside; you are then to look
attentively at Mademoiselle Modeste (yes, I am willing to allow it)
during the whole time he is speaking to you. My worthy friend will ask
you to go out and take a walk; at the end of an hour, that is, about
nine o'clock, you are to come back in a great hurry; try to puff as if
you were out of breath, and whisper in Monsieur Dumay's ear, quite low,
but so that Mademoiselle Modeste is sure to overhear you, these words:
'The young man has come.'"

Exupere was to start the next morning for Paris to begin the study of
law. This impending departure had induced Latournelle to propose him
to his friend Dumay as an accomplice in the important conspiracy which
these directions indicate.

"Is Mademoiselle Modeste suspected of having a lover?" asked Butscha in
a timid voice of Madame Latournelle.

"Hush, Butscha," she replied, taking her husband's arm.

Madame Latournelle, the daughter of a clerk of the supreme court,
feels that her birth authorizes her to claim issue from a parliamentary
family. This conviction explains why the lady, who is somewhat blotched
as to complexion, endeavors to assume in her own person the majesty of
a court whose decrees are recorded in her father's pothooks. She
takes snuff, holds herself as stiff as a ramrod, poses for a person
of consideration, and resembles nothing so much as a mummy brought
momentarily to life by galvanism. She tries to give high-bred tones to
her sharp voice, and succeeds no better in doing that than in hiding
her general lack of breeding. Her social usefulness seems, however,
incontestable when we glance at the flower-bedecked cap she wears,
at the false front frizzling around her forehead, at the gowns of her
choice; for how could shopkeepers dispose of those products if there
were no Madame Latournelle? All these absurdities of the worthy woman,
who is truly pious and charitable, might have passed unnoticed, if
nature, amusing herself as she often does by turning out these ludicrous
creations, had not endowed her with the height of a drum-major, and thus
held up to view the comicalities of her provincial nature. She has
never been out of