d a house built by himself, near the church of St. Leu, in the
Rue St. Denys, where his forge was well known to half the amateurs of
fine jewelry. He was a man of pure morals and persevering industry;
always laboring, always improving, constantly learning new secrets and
new receipts, and seeking everywhere for new fashions and devices to
attract and gratify his customers. When the night was far advanced, the
soldiers of the guard and the revellers returning from their carousals,
always saw a lighted lamp at the casement of the goldsmith's workshop,
where he was hammering, carving, chiseling and filing,--in a word,
laboring at those marvels of ingenuity and toil which made the delight
of the ladies and the minions of the court. He was a man who lived in
the fear of God, and in a wholesome dread of robbers, nobles, and noise.
He was gentle and moderate of speech, courteous to noble, monk and
burgess, so that he might be said to have no enemy.

Claude Anseau was strongly built. His arms were rounded and muscular,
and his hand had the grip of an iron vice. His broad shoulders reminded
the learned of the giant Atlas; his white teeth seemed as if they were
formed for masticating iron. His countenance, though placid, was full of
resolution, and his glance was so keen that it might have melted gold,
though the limpid lustre of his eyes tempered their burning ardor. In a
word, though a peaceable man, the goldsmith was not one to be insulted
with impunity, and perhaps it was a knowledge of his physical qualities
that secured him from attack in those stormy days of ruffianly violence.

Yet sometimes, in spite of his accumulating wealth and tranquil life,
the loneliness of the goldsmith made him restless. He was not insensible
to beauty, and often, as he wrought a wedding ring for the finger of
some fair damsel, he thought with what delight he could forge one for
some gentle creature who would love him for himself and not for the
riches that called him lord. Then he would sally forth and hie to the
river-side, and pass long hours in the dreamy reveries of an artist.

One day as he was strolling, in this tender frame of mind, along the
left bank of the Seine, he came to the meadow afterwards called the Pre
aux Clercs, which was then in the domain of the Abbey of St. Germain,
and not in that of the University. There, finding himself in the open
fields, he encountered a poor girl, who addressed him with the simple
salutation:--"God