purple ink. I had the
pleasure, before a half hour had passed, of making her commit more
than one error in her columns, do violet violence to the neatness of
her book, and adorn her thumb-nail with a comical tiny silhouette.
My gossip, which had this encouraging and proud effect, was commenced
easily upon familiar subjects, such as the old rose-garden and the
chickens, but branched imperceptibly into more personal confidences.
I found myself growing strangely confidential. Soon I had sketched for
Francine my life of opulent loneliness, my cook and my old valet, my
philosopher's den at Marly, my negligent existence at Paris, without
family, country or obligations.

Her good gray eyes were swimming with tears, I thought. With a look
of perfect natural sweetness she said, "To live alone and far from
kin and fatherland, that is not amusing. It is like one of the small
straight sticks of rose my father would take and plant in the sand in
a far-away little red pot."

A delicious vignette, I confess, began to be outlined in my fancy. I
cannot describe it, but I know Francine was in the middle repairing
a stocking, while my own books and geographical notes, in a state
of dustlessness they had never known actually, formed a brown bower
around her. Somewhere near, in an old secretary or in a grave, was
buried the ideal of an earlier, haughtier love; wrapped up in a stolen
ribbon or pressed in a book.

She continued simply, "I am very much alone myself. Without the visits
of Monsieur Fortnoye I should be dead of ennui. I am so glad to find
you know him, monsieur!"

[Illustration: SELF-CONTROL.]

This jarred upon me more than I can say. I assumed, as one can at
my age, an air of parental benevolence, in which I administered my
dissatisfaction: "Fortnoye is a roysterer, a squanderer, a wanderer
and a _petroleur_. At your age, my child, you are really imprudent."

"He is a little wild, but he is young himself. And so good, so
generous, so kind! I owe him everything."

"On what conditions?" said I, more severely perhaps than I meant.
"Your relations, my daughter, are not very clear. Is he then your
_verlobter_?"

She looked at me with an expression of stupefaction, then buried her
face in her hands: "He my intended! Has he ever dreamed of such a
thing? Am I not a poor flower-girl?"

And she was sobbing through her fingers.

My nights were sweet at Carlsruhe. My slumber was ushered in with
those delicious dream-sketches