a very young person in
the cemetery of Laaken who is much in need of a chaperone," he said.
The frank proofs of his own relations with this churchyard would
not only do credit to his own reputation, but would gratify the best
friends of Mademoiselle Joliet and at least one other lady. To attain
these proofs he had to step over the coiling, writhing bodies of
a whole nest of rumors. When he seized by the throat the especial
slander that he himself was the husband of the babe's mother, he found
written on its crest the signature of John Kranich. He sought the
aunt. This lady gave him several interviews, the Lutheran prayer-book
for ever in her hand. "Why does the dear girl not come to me?"
she would say, weeping, but she refused to hear a word against her
precious nephew, the personification of bluff frankness. As if to make
crushing him impossible, young Kranich had now withdrawn to America,
leaving his reputation in that best possible protection, the chivalry
that is extended toward the absent. Fortnoye was baffled. "I will ask
the baby at its tomb for its mother's and father's name," he cried.
In the pretty God's Acre he found a fresh harvest of flowers and a
new statue over the well-known grave. It was a pretty miniature of
Thorwaldsen's Psyche, on which the proud copyist had inscribed his
name. A respectful correspondence with Mrs. Ashburleigh, to whom
he was guided by the sculptor, and who was now taking the waters at
Wildbad, soon put the whole tangled story to rights. Fortnoye had the
happiness of conducting Francine, by this time his affianced wife, to
the good Frau Kranich, who, convinced that she had wrongly judged
her, threw her arms ardently around her recovered jewel, letting the
eternal little book fly from her hand like a projectile.

[Illustration: THE FUTURE OF FFARINA.]

"But the most singular part of the story," concluded Father Joliet,
"is the letter which Fortnoye, after two or three quarrels, forced
out of young Kranich when the latter had returned to Europe, full of
triumph and debts, to take possession of his aunt for the rest of his
life. Here it is," added the good man, opening a pocket-book. "The
hand-writing is drunken, but the sense is clear as Seltzer-water.
The scholars tell me _in vino veritas est_, but it appears to me that
truth really comes out in the repentance and headache that follow."

[Illustration: HOHENFELS' FAILURE.]

"MY DEAR AUNT" (ran the letter which Charles had seen fo