r the year previously.

And she did not go home that night, although the door was to be closed
at ten o'clock!

During the whole fortnight which I had at my disposal I took Carlotta to
all the places of interest in and about Genoa. She gave me no cause to
regret the other.

She cried when I left her, and the morning of my departure I gave her
four bracelets for her mother, besides a substantial token of my
affection for herself.

One of these days I intend to return to Italy, and I cannot help
remembering, with a certain amount of uneasiness, mingled with hope,
that Mme. Rondoli has two more daughters.

CHALI

Admiral de la Vallee, who seemed to be half asleep in his armchair, said
in a voice which sounded like an old woman's:

"I had a very singular little love adventure once; would you like to
hear it?"

He spoke from the depths of his great chair, with that everlasting dry,
wrinkled smile on his lips, that smile _a la Voltaire_, which made
people take him for a terrible skeptic.

I

I was thirty years of age and first lieutenant in the navy, when I was
intrusted with an astronomical expedition to Central India. The English
Government provided me with all the necessary means for carrying out my
enterprise, and I was soon busied with a few followers in that strange,
surprising, prodigious country.

It would take me ten volumes to relate that journey. I went through
wonderfully magnificent regions, and was received by strangely handsome
princes, who entertained me with incredible magnificence. For two months
it seemed to me as if I were walking in a poem, and that I was going
about in a fairy kingdom, on the back of imaginary elephants. In the
midst of wild forests I discovered extraordinary ruins, delicate and
chiseled like jewels, fine as lace and enormous as mountains, those
fabulous, divine monuments which are so graceful that one falls in love
with their form like one falls in love with a woman, and that one feels
a physical and sensual pleasure in looking at them. As Victor Hugo says,
"_Whilst wide-awake, I was walking in a dream_."

Towards the end of my journey I reached Ganhard, which was formerly one
of the most prosperous towns in Central India, but is now much decayed
and governed by a wealthy, arbitrary, violent, generous, and cruel
prince. His name is Rajah Maddan, a true Oriental potentate, delicate
and barbarous, affable and sanguinary, combining feminine grace with
pitiless fe