den. Such was my exercise with this pleasant
head in its neat cambric cap; but in place of consulting my memory
with the proper coolness, I am afraid I questioned my heart.

Immediately after the coffee my pretty hostess, passing my chair, with
a quick motion in going out made me a slight gesture. I followed her
into a small office or ante-chamber adjoining. The furniture was very
simple; the indicator, with a figure for every bell, decorated the
wall in its cherry-wood frame; the keys, hanging aslant in rows,
like points of interrogation in a letter of Sevigne's, formed a
corresponding ornament; and a row of registers on the desk completed
the furniture. One of these books she drew forward, opened and
presented for my signature, still flashing over my face that intent
but benevolent glance.

"Monsieur, have the goodness to inscribe your name, the place you came
from, and that of your destination."

I took the pen, and, with the air of complying exactly and courteously
with her demand, folded the quill into three or four lengths, and
placed it weltering in ink within my waistcoat pocket. I was looking
intently into my hostess's face.

I think no American can observe without peculiar complacency the neat
artisanne's cap on the brows of a respectable young Frenchwoman. This
cap is made of some opaque white substance, tender yet solid, and the
theory of its existence is that it should be stainless and incapable
of disturbance. It is the badge of an order, the sign of unpretending
industry. The personage who wears it does not propose to look like
a "dame:" she contentedly crowns herself with the tiara of her rank.
Long generations of unaspiring humility have bequeathed her this
soft and candid sign of distinction: as her turn comes in the line
of inheritance she spends her life in keeping unsullied its difficult
purity, and she will leave to her daughters the critical task of its
equipoise. If she soils or rumples or tears it, she descends in her
little scale of dignities and becomes an ouvriere. If she loses it,
she is unclassed entirely, and enters the half-world. The porter's
wife with her dubious mob-cap, and the hard, flaunting grisette with
her melancholy feathers and determined chapeau, are equally removed
from the white cap of the "young person." To maintain it in its vestal
candor and proud sincerity is not always an easy task in a land where
every careless student and idle nobleman is eager to tumble it
with