antage of Clelia's more softened mood, he formed on the
palm of his hand a number of letters in succession, which taken together
made up these words:--

"I love you, and life is dear to me only when I can see you. Above all
else, send me paper and a pencil."

As Fabrice had hoped and expected, the extreme terror visible in the
young girl's face operated to prevent her from terminating the interview
on receipt of this audacious message; she only testified her displeasure
by her looks. Fabrice had the prudence to add:--"The wind blows so hard
to-day that I couldn't catch quite all you said; and then, too, the
sound of the piano drowns your voice. You were saying something about
poison, weren't you--what was it?"

At these words the young girl's terror returned in all its violence; she
hurriedly set to work to describe with ink a number of large capital
letters on the leaves she tore from one of her books, and Fabrice was
delighted to see her at last adopt the method of correspondence that he
had been vainly advocating for the last three months. But this system,
although an improvement on the signals, was less desirable than a
regular exchange of letters, so Fabrice constantly feigned to be unable
to decipher the words of which she exhibited the component letters.

A summons from her father obliged her to leave the aviary. She was in
great alarm lest he might come to look for her there; his suspicious
nature would have been likely to scent danger in the proximity of his
daughter's window to the prisoner's. It had occurred to Clelia a short
time before, while so anxiously awaiting Fabrice's appearance, that
pebbles might be made factors in their correspondence, by wrapping the
paper on which the message was written round them and throwing them up
so they should fall within the open upper portion of the screen. The
device would have worked well unless Fabrice's keeper chanced to be in
the room at the time.

Our prisoner proceeded to tear one of his shirts into narrow strips,
forming a sort of ribbon. Shortly after nine o'clock that evening he
heard a tapping on the boxes of the orange-trees under his window; he
cautiously lowered his ribbon, and on drawing it up again found attached
to its free end a long cord by means of which he hauled up a supply of
chocolate, and, to his inexpressible satisfaction, a package of
note-paper and a pencil. He dropped the cord again, but to no purpose;
perhaps the sentries on their round