nst the edge of the door, caught at it to keep
herself from falling, but kept her eyes still fixt upon the chairs.

The vision disappeared. For some moments she remained forgetful of
everything; then slowly she recovered her self-possession, and would
have fled from the room, fearful of losing her self-control. Her
glance fell by chance on the door-post on which she was leaning; and
there before her eyes were the marks that had been made to keep track
of Poulet's height as he was growing up!

The little marks climbed the painted wood at irregular intervals;
figures traced with the penknife noted down the different ages with
the month of the boy's life. Sometimes the jottings were in the
handwriting of the baron, a large hand; sometimes they were in her own
smaller hand; sometimes in that of Aunt Lison, a little shaky. It
seemed to her that the child of other days was actually there, before
her, with his blond hair, pressing his little forehead against the
wall so that his height could be measured. The baron was crying,
"Jeanne! he has grown a whole centimeter in the last six weeks!" She
began to kiss the piece of wood in a frenzy of love.

But some one was calling her from outside. It was Rosalie's voice:
"Madame Jeanne, Madame Jeanne, we are waiting for you, to have
luncheon." She went out in a trance. She hardly understood anything
that the other said to her. She ate the things that they put on her
plate; she listened without knowing what she heard, talking
mechanically with the farming-women, who inquired about her health;
she let them embrace her, and herself kissed the cheeks offered to
her; and then got into the wagon again.

When she caught her last glimpse of the high roof of the chateau
across the trees, she felt a terrible sinking in her heart. It seemed
to her in her innermost being that she had said farewell forever to
her old home!

GERMANY

1483-1859

MARTIN LUTHER

Born in 1483, died in 1546; his father a slate-cutter:
studied at Magdeburg and Erfurt; against the wishes of his
family, became a monk; went to Rome in 1510; published on
the church door at Wittenburg in 1517 his thesis against the
sale of indulgences; summoned to Rome, he refused to go and
published further attacks upon the Church; excommunicated in
1520 and his writings publicly burned, whereupon he publicly
burned the papal bull of excommunication; made his speech
before t