ll after Lent. So mamma took me last year to a dozen large
balls, which were sad and sorrowful for me. He was not there! He didn't
wish to marry! He told it to every one insolently, satirically. He would
never, never, never marry! He told it to me."

"At your mother's request."

"Yes, that is true. I know since that it was at mamma's petition that he
talked that way; she hoped it would prevent my being stubborn in my
craze for him."

"Craze!" exclaimed Aunt Louise.

"Excuse me, Aunt Louise, it is a word of to-day."

"And means--"

"It means a sort of unexplainable, absurd, and extravagant love that
comes without its being possible to know why--in short, Aunt Louise,
exactly the love I have for him."

"Much obliged! But you do not tell everything. You do not say that your
mother desired your marriage with Courtalin--"

"Yes, of course; mamma was quite right. M. de Courtalin has a thousand
sterling merits that you have not--that you will never have; and then M.
de Courtalin had a particularly good point in mamma's eyes: he did not
find me too thin, and he asked for my hand in marriage. One day about
four o'clock (that was the 2d of June last year) mamma came into my room
with an expression on her face I had never seen before. 'My child,' she
said--'my dear child!' She had no need to finish; I had understood. M.
de Courtalin all the evening before, at the Princess de Viran's, had
hovered about me, and the next day his mother had come to declare to
mamma that her son knew of nothing more delightful than my face. I
answered that I knew of nothing less delightful than M. de Courtalin's
face. I added that, besides, I was in no hurry to marry. Mamma tried to
make me hear reason. I was going to let slip an admirable chance. The
Duke of Courtalin was the target of all the ambitious mothers--a great
name, a great position, a great fortune! I should deeply regret some day
to have shown such disdain for advantages like these, etc. And to all
these things, which were so true and sensible, I could find only one
word to say: his name, Gontran, Gontran, Gontran! Gontran or the
convent, and the most rigorous one of all, the Carmel, in sackcloth and
ashes! Oh, Aunt Louise, do look at him! He listens to all this with an
unbearable little air of fatuity."

"You have forbidden me to speak."

"True. Don't speak; but you have deserved a little lesson in modesty and
humility. Good gracious! you think perhaps it was for your merits t