lmire--when a
provincial actor plays the part and thinks it necessary to emphasize its
meaning--at Poitiers, or at Coutances.

"If you will come into this room with me, we shall be more conveniently
placed for talking business than we are in this room," said Madame
Hulot, going to an adjoining room, which, as the apartment was arranged,
served as a cardroom.

It was divided by a slight partition from a boudoir looking out on the
garden, and Madame Hulot left her visitor to himself for a minute, for
she thought it wise to shut the window and the door of the boudoir, so
that no one should get in and listen. She even took the precaution of
shutting the glass door of the drawing-room, smiling on her daughter and
her cousin, whom she saw seated in an old summer-house at the end of the
garden. As she came back she left the cardroom door open, so as to hear
if any one should open that of the drawing-room to come in.

As she came and went, the Baroness, seen by nobody, allowed her face to
betray all her thoughts, and any one who could have seen her would have
been shocked to see her agitation. But when she finally came back from
the glass door of the drawing-room, as she entered the cardroom, her
face was hidden behind the impenetrable reserve which every woman, even
the most candid, seems to have at her command.

During all these preparations--odd, to say the least--the National
Guardsman studied the furniture of the room in which he found himself.
As he noted the silk curtains, once red, now faded to dull purple by the
sunshine, and frayed in the pleats by long wear; the carpet, from which
the hues had faded; the discolored gilding of the furniture; and the
silk seats, discolored in patches, and wearing into strips--expressions
of scorn, satisfaction, and hope dawned in succession without disguise
on his stupid tradesman's face. He looked at himself in the glass over
an old clock of the Empire, and was contemplating the general effect,
when the rustle of her silk skirt announced the Baroness. He at once
struck at attitude.

After dropping on to a sofa, which had been a very handsome one in the
year 1809, the Baroness, pointing to an armchair with the arms ending in
bronze sphinxes' heads, while the paint was peeling from the wood, which
showed through in many places, signed to Crevel to be seated.

"All the precautions you are taking, madame, would seem full of promise
to a----"

"To a lover," said she, interrupting h