ch
deprived her of a pleasure, declared it was silly to swing so high. On
his side Doctor Deberle did not say a word, but seemed anxious.

"It is nothing serious," said Doctor Bodin, as he came down again
--"only a sprain. Still, she will have to keep to an easy-chair for at
least a fortnight."

Thereupon Monsieur Deberle gave a friendly slap on Malignon's
shoulder. He wished his wife to go in, as it was really becoming too
cold. For his own part, taking Lucien in his arms, he carried him into
the house, covering him with kisses the while.

CHAPTER V.

Both windows of the bedroom were wide open, and in the depths below
the house, which was perched on the very summit of the hill, lay
Paris, rolling away in a mighty flat expanse. Ten o'clock struck; the
lovely February morning had all the sweetness and perfume of spring.

Helene reclined in an invalid chair, reading in front of one of the
windows, her knee still in bandages. She suffered no pain; but she had
been confined to her room for a week past, unable even to take up her
customary needlework. Not knowing what to do, she had opened a book
which she had found on the table--she, who indulged in little or no
reading at any time. This book was the one she used every night as a
shade for the night-lamp, the only volume which she had taken within
eighteen months from the small but irreproachable library selected by
Monsieur Rambaud. Novels usually seemed to her false to life and
puerile; and this one, Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe," had at first
wearied her to death. However, a strange curiosity had grown upon her,
and she was finishing it, at times affected to tears, and at times
rather bored, when she would let it slip from her hand for long
minutes and gaze fixedly at the far-stretching horizon.

That morning Paris awoke from sleep with a smiling indolence. A mass
of vapor, following the valley of the Seine, shrouded the two banks
from view. This mist was light and milky, and the sun, gathering
strength, was slowly tinging it with radiance. Nothing of the city was
distinguishable through this floating muslin. In the hollows the haze
thickened and assumed a bluish tint; while over certain broad expanses
delicate transparencies appeared, a golden dust, beneath which you
could divine the depths of the streets; and up above domes and
steeples rent the mist, rearing grey outlines to which clung shreds of
the haze which they had pierced.