st sixteen and so pretty.

"You will take me to see them some time, will you not?" said Maurice,
who listened to his friend with his natural good grace. "But first of
all, you must come to dinner some day with me, and I will present you to
my mother. Next Sunday, for instance. Is it agreeable?"

Amedee would have liked to refuse, for he suddenly recalled--oh! the
torture and suffering of poor young men! that his Sunday coat was almost
as seedy as his everyday one, that his best pair of shoes were run-over
at the heels, and that the collars and cuffs on his six white shirts
were ragged on the edges from too frequent washings. Then, to go to
dinner in the city, what an ordeal! What must he do to be presented in
a drawing-room? The very thought of it made him shiver. But Maurice
invited him so cordially that he was irresistible, and Amedee accepted.

The following Sunday, then, spruced up in his best-what could have
possessed the haberdasher to induce him to buy a pair of red dog-skin
gloves? He soon saw that they were too new and too startling for the
rest of his costume--Amedee went up to the first floor of a fine house
on the Faubourg St. Honore and rang gently at the door on the left. A
young and pretty maid--one of those brunettes who have a waist that one
can clasp in both hands, and a suspicion of a moustache--opened the door
and ushered the young man into a drawing-room furnished in a simple but
luxurious manner. Maurice was alone, standing with his back to the fire,
in the attitude of master of the house. He received his friend with warm
demonstrations of pleasure. Amedee's eyes were at once attracted by
the portrait of a handsome lieutenant of artillery, dressed in the
regimental coat, with long skirts, of 1845, and wearing a sword-belt
fastened by two lion's heads. This officer, in parade costume, was
painted in the midst of a desert, seated under a palm-tree.

"That is my father," said Maurice. "Do I not resemble him?"

The resemblance was really striking. The same warm, pleasant smile, and
even the same blond curls. Amedee was admiring it when a voice repeated
behind him, like an echo:

"Maurice resembles him, does he not?"

It was Madame Roger who had quietly entered. When Amedee saw this
stately lady in mourning, with a Roman profile, and clear, white
complexion, who threw such an earnest glance at her son, then at her
husband's portrait, Amedee comprehended that Maurice was his mother's
idol, and, mo