ing akin to evening gossip round the winter fire, when one sets
out for some voyage in China. But what becomes of virtue during these
delicious excursions, when fancy overleaps all difficulties?

"During the first ten months of seclusion I led the life of poverty and
solitude that I have described to you; I used to steal out unobserved
every morning to buy my own provisions for the day; I tidied my room; I
was at once master and servant, and played the Diogenes with incredible
spirit. But afterwards, while my hostess and her daughter watched my
ways and behavior, scrutinized my appearance and divined my poverty,
there could not but be some bonds between us; perhaps because they were
themselves so very poor. Pauline, the charming child, whose latent
and unconscious grace had, in a manner, brought me there, did me many
services that I could not well refuse. All women fallen on evil days
are sisters; they speak a common language; they have the same
generosity--the generosity that possesses nothing, and so is lavish of
its affection, of its time, and of its very self.

"Imperceptibly Pauline took me under her protection, and would do
things for me. No kind of objection was made by her mother, whom I even
surprised mending my linen; she blushed for the charitable occupation.
In spite of myself, they took charge of me, and I accepted their
services.

"In order to understand the peculiar condition of my mind, my
preoccupation with work must be remembered, the tyranny of ideas, and
the instinctive repugnance that a man who leads an intellectual life
must ever feel for the material details of existence. Could I well
repulse the delicate attentions of Pauline, who would noiselessly bring
me my frugal repast, when she noticed that I had taken nothing for seven
or eight hours? She had the tact of a woman and the inventiveness of a
child; she would smile as she made sign to me that I must not see her.
Ariel glided under my roof in the form of a sylph who foresaw every want
of mine.

"One evening Pauline told me her story with touching simplicity. Her
father had been a major in the horse grenadiers of the Imperial Guard.
He had been taken prisoner by the Cossacks, at the passage of Beresina;
and when Napoleon later on proposed an exchange, the Russian authorities
made search for him in Siberia in vain; he had escaped with a view of
reaching India, and since then Mme. Gaudin, my landlady, could hear no
news of her husband. Then ca