ds, Bribri for the rose colour. Oh,
the gentle shepherdesses! they spent a whole hour in finding a name
they liked. At last, Madeleine fixed on Amaranthe, Bribri on Daphne.
I have just seen them gliding among the trees that overshadow the
lovely stream.--Poor shepherdesses! be on your guard against the
wolves."

At noon that very day Madeleine and Bribri, or rather Amaranthe and
Daphne, in grey silk petticoats and satin bodies, with their
beautiful hair in a state of most careful disorder, and with their
crooks in hand, conducted the twelve sheep out of the park into the
meadows. The flock, which seemed to be very hungry, were rather
troublesome and disobedient. The shepherdesses did all they could to
keep them in the proper path. It was a delicious mixture of bleatings,
and laughter, and baaings, and pastoral songs. The happy girls
inhaled the soul of nature, as their poetical mamma expressed it.
They ran--they threw themselves on the blooming grass--they looked
at themselves in the limpid waters of the Lignon--they gathered
lapfulls of primroses. The flock made the best use of their time;
and every now and then a sheep of more observation than the rest,
perceiving they were guarded by such extraordinary shepherdesses,
took half an hour's diversion among the fresh-springing corn.

"That's one of yours," said Amaranthe.

"No; 'tis yours," replied Daphne; but, by way of having no
difficulties in future, they resolved to divide the flock, and
ornament one-half with blue collars, and the other with rose-colour.
And they gave a name also to each of the members of their flock,
such as Meliboeus, and Jeannot, and Robin, and Blanchette. Twelve
more poetical sheep were never fed on grass before. When the sun
began to sink, the shepherdesses brought back their flocks. Madame
Deshoulieres cried with joy. "Oh, my dear girls!" she said, kissing
their fair foreheads; "it is you that have composed an eclogue, and
not I."

"Nothing is wanting to the picture," said the Duchess, seating
herself under the willows of the watering-place, and admiring the
graceful girls.

"I think we want a dog," said Daphne.

"No; we are rather in want of a wolf," whispered the beautiful
Amaranthe--and blushed.

CHAPTER II.

Not far from the Chateau d'Urtis, the old manor-house of Langevy
raised its pointed turrets above the surrounding woods. There, in
complete isolation from the world, lived Monsieur de Langevy, his
old mother, and his you