She continued simply, “I am very much alone myself.  Without the visits of Monsieur Fortnoye I should be dead of ennui.  I am so glad to find you know him, monsieur!”

[Illustration:  SELF-CONTROL.]

This jarred upon me more than I can say.  I assumed, as one can at my age, an air of parental benevolence, in which I administered my dissatisfaction:  “Fortnoye is a roysterer, a squanderer, a wanderer and a petroleur.  At your age, my child, you are really imprudent.”

“He is a little wild, but he is young himself.  And so good, so generous, so kind!  I owe him everything.”

“On what conditions?” said I, more severely perhaps than I meant.  “Your relations, my daughter, are not very clear.  Is he then your verlobter?”

She looked at me with an expression of stupefaction, then buried her face in her hands:  “He my intended!  Has he ever dreamed of such a thing?  Am I not a poor flower-girl?”

And she was sobbing through her fingers.

My nights were sweet at Carlsruhe.  My slumber was ushered in with those delicious dream-sketches that lend their grace to folly.  Each morning I wondered what surprise the day would arrange for me.

The little wood was hidden from my window by an early fog:  the birds were silent.  I was meditating on my singular position, in pawn as it were under the care of Joliet’s good daughter, when I heard my name pronounced at the bottom of the stairs.  It was Sylvester Berkley.

The briskness of our friendships depends on the time when—­the place where.  To men in prison a familiar face is the next thing to liberty.

Some years ago I had an absurd dispute with a neighbor about a party-wall at Passy, and was obliged to go to the Palace of Justice at ten every morning for a week.  My forced intercourse with those solemn birds in black plumage had a singular effect on me.  While among them I felt as if cut off from my species, and visiting with Gulliver some dreadful island peopled with mere allegories.  As the time passed I grew worse:  I dragged myself to the Cite with horror, and before returning home was always obliged to wash out my brains by a short stroll in Notre Dame or amongst the fine glass of the Sainte Chapelle.  One day, pacing the pale and shuffling corridors of the palace, waiting for an unpunctual lawyer, and regarding the gowns and caps around me with insupportable hate, at the turning of a passage—­oh happiness!—­a face was revealed in the distance, the face of a friend, the face of an old neighbor.  At the bright apparition I made an involuntary sign of joy:  the owner of the face seemed no less pleased.  We walked toward each other, our hands expanded.  All of a sudden a doubt seemed to strike us both at the same moment:  he slackened his pace, I slackened mine.  We met:  we had never done so before.  It was a little mistake.  We saluted each other slightly and gravely, and separated once more, as wise in our looks as that irreproachable hero who, after marching up the hill with his men, pocketed his thoughts and marched down again.