“Oh! what a slap!” cried the girl, half in fright, half in glee, jerking herself back from the casement simultaneously with the report.  But the “ahas” and laughter, and clapping of feminine hands, which still continued, came from another cause.  ’Tite Poulette’s rapid action had struck the slender cord that held up an end of her hanging garden, and the whole rank of cigar-boxes slid from their place, turned gracefully over as they shot through the air, and emptied themselves plump upon the head of the slapped manager.  Breathless, dirty, pale as whitewash, he gasped a threat to be heard from again, and, getting round the corner as quick as he could walk, left Kristian Koppig, standing motionless, the most astonished man in that street.

“Kristian Koppig, Kristian Koppig,” said Greatheart to himself, slowly dragging up-stairs, “what a mischief you have done.  One poor woman certainly to be robbed of her bitter wages, and another—­so lovely!—­put to the burning shame of being the subject of a street brawl!  What will this silly neighborhood say?  ’Has the gentleman a heart as well as a hand?’ ‘Is it jealousy?’” There he paused, afraid himself to answer the supposed query; and then—­“Oh!  Kristian Koppig, you have been such a dunce!” “And I cannot apologize to them.  Who in this street would carry my note, and not wink and grin over it with low surmises?  I cannot even make restitution.  Money?  They would not dare receive it.  Oh!  Kristian Koppig, why did you not mind your own business?  Is she any thing to you?  Do you love her? Of course not!  Oh!—­such a dunce!”

The reader will eagerly admit that however faulty this young man’s course of reasoning, his conclusion was correct.  For mark what he did.

He went to his room, which was already growing dark, shut his window, lighted his big Dutch lamp, and sat down to write.  “Something must be done,” said he aloud, taking up his pen; “I will be calm and cool; I will be distant and brief; but—­I shall have to be kind or I may offend.  Ah!  I shall have to write in French; I forgot that; I write it so poorly, dunce that I am, when all my brothers and sisters speak it so well.”  He got out his French dictionary.  Two hours slipped by.  He made a new pen, washed and refilled his inkstand, mended his “abominable!” chair, and after two hours more made another attempt, and another failure.  “My head aches,” said he, and lay down on his couch, the better to frame his phrases.

He was awakened by the Sabbath sunlight.  The bells of the Cathedral and the Ursulines’ chapel were ringing for high mass, and a mocking-bird, perching on a chimney-top above Madame John’s rooms, was carolling, whistling, mewing, chirping, screaming, and trilling with the ecstasy of a whole May in his throat.  “Oh! sleepy Kristian Koppig,” was the young man’s first thought, “—­such a dunce!”

Madame John and daughter did not go to mass.  The morning wore away, and their casement remained closed.  “They are offended,” said Kristian Koppig, leaving the house, and wandering up to the little Protestant affair known as Christ Church.