books alone. She has learned three or
four languages, and read all the books either here or at the parsonage.
When, however, she is in society, one would fancy her a very ignorant
person, so little does she say and so anxious does she appear to conceal
her information. Her modesty is disturbed by no vanity, and the placidity
of her meditations is interrupted by no vulgar commotion. One might
almost fancy her a stranger to this world, indifferent to its
calculations, lost to its joys, and submitting without effort to its
sorrows. I have never seen her smile, but I have never heard her
complain. Delicate and weak, the paleness of her face, the languor of her
appearance, betray a physical suffering she herself denies.

"As soon as she perceives that I remark any indisposition in her, her
countenance becomes illuminated by a gentle light, her lips are gilded
with a sweet smile, as if she begged me to excuse the uneasiness she had
inspired me with.

"Forgive me, dear Ireneus, for this unscrupulous thrusting on you of my
paternal egotism. I should first have inquired after you and your hopes
which were crushed so soon. Ebba, however, is ever a cause of anxiety to
me."

Ireneus replied to this confidence by cordially clasping his hand. Just
at that moment it was announced that the table was served.

"Come," said the old man, "you will not find here the gastronomical
niceties of Paris. Like plain country people, we live on the produce of
the soil. A good bottle of old beer, however, has some merit, and
varieties of game are found in our forests, for which the _gourmets_ of
Paris would willingly exchange their hares and partridges."

Ireneus sat between his two cousins, and his youthful appetite, sharpened
by the journey he had made, delighted the old man. As he ate large slices
of the haunch of a reindeer, and drank cup after cup of a savory beer,
prepared with particular care by Alete, he contrived to look at the young
girls on each side of him.

The eldest, always in motion, waited on her cousin and her father, went
to the kitchen, sat again at the table, and when she laughed disclosed
two rows of pearl between her rose-colored lips. She was indeed a
charming girl, round and dimpled as a child, fresh and gay as a bird,
with every gesture graceful, though she was a little espiegle and
coquettish. Her coquetry, however, was naive and chaste, of a kind which
in many women is but the amiable manifestation of a sentiment of