ow whether he whose indiscretion
had driven her from her place was still at his. At last a few masterly
chords were heard; a sweet harmony followed; and it was then D'Harmental
who opened his window in his turn.

He had not been mistaken, his neighbor was an admirable musician; she
executed two or three little pieces, but without blending her voice with
the sound of the instrument; and D'Harmental found almost as much
pleasure in listening to her as he had found in looking at her. Suddenly
she stopped in the midst of a passage. D'Harmental supposed either that
she had seen him at his window, and wished to punish him for his
curiosity, or that some one had come in and interrupted her. He retired
into his room, but so as not to lose sight of the window, and soon
discovered that his last supposition was the true one.

A man came to the window, raised the curtain, and pressed his fat,
good-natured face against the glass, while with one hand he beat a march
against the panes. The chevalier recognized, in spite of a sensible
difference which there was in his toilet, the man of the water-jet whom
he had seen on the terrace in the morning, and who, with a perfect air
of familiarity, had twice pronounced the name of "Bathilde."

This apparition, more than prosaic, produced the effect which might
naturally have been expected; that is to say, it brought D'Harmental
back from imaginary to real life. He had forgotten this man, who made
such a strange and perfect contrast with the young girl, and who must
doubtless be either her father, her lover, or her husband. But in either
of these cases, what could there be in common between the daughter, the
wife, or the mistress of such a man, and the noble and aristocratic
chevalier? The wife! It is a misfortune of her dependent situation that
she rises and falls according to the grandeur or vulgarity of him on
whose arm she leans; and it must be confessed that the gardener was not
formed to maintain poor Bathilde at the height to which the chevalier
had raised her in his dreams.

Then he began to laugh at his own folly; and the night having arrived,
and as he had not been outside the door since the day before, he
determined to take a walk through the town, in order to assure himself
of the truth of the Prince de Cellamare's reports. He wrapped himself in
his cloak, descended the four stories, and bent his steps toward the
Luxembourg, where the note which the Abbe Brigaud had brought him i