ce identified him as the artist,
from the color that flushed a face pale with endurance; she saw the
spark lighted up in his gray eyes by her question; she looked on the
thin, drawn features, like those of a monk consumed by asceticism; she
loved the red, well-formed mouth, the delicate chin, and the Pole's
silky chestnut hair.

"If it were twelve hundred," said she, "I would beg you to send it to
me."

"It is antique, mademoiselle," the dealer remarked, thinking, like
all his fraternity, that, having uttered this _ne plus ultra_ of
bric-a-brac, there was no more to be said.

"Excuse me, monsieur," she replied very quietly, "it was made this year;
I came expressly to beg you, if my price is accepted, to send the
artist to see us, as it might be possible to procure him some important
commissions."

"And if he is to have the twelve hundred francs, what am I to get? I am
the dealer," said the man, with candid good-humor.

"To be sure!" replied the girl, with a slight curl of disdain.

"Oh! mademoiselle, take it; I will make terms with the dealer," cried
the Livonian, beside himself.

Fascinated by Hortense's wonderful beauty and the love of art she
displayed, he added:

"I am the sculptor of the group, and for ten days I have come here three
times a day to see if anybody would recognize its merit and bargain for
it. You are my first admirer--take it!"

"Come, then, monsieur, with the dealer, an hour hence.--Here is my
father's card," replied Hortense.

Then, seeing the shopkeeper go into a back room to wrap the group in a
piece of linen rag, she added in a low voice, to the great astonishment
of the artist, who thought he must be dreaming:

"For the benefit of your future prospects, Monsieur Wenceslas, do not
mention the name of the purchaser to Mademoiselle Fischer, for she is
our cousin."

The word cousin dazzled the artist's mind; he had a glimpse of Paradise
whence this daughter of Eve had come to him. He had dreamed of the
beautiful girl of whom Lisbeth had told him, as Hortense had dreamed of
her cousin's lover; and, as she had entered the shop--

"Ah!" thought he, "if she could but be like this!"

The look that passed between the lovers may be imagined; it was a flame,
for virtuous lovers have no hypocrisies.

"Well, what the deuce are you doing here?" her father asked her.

"I have been spending twelve hundred francs that I had saved. Come." And
she took her father's arm.

"Twelve hundred fra