would make her on the feast of the Blessed Saint-John, and find out the meaning of speeches repressed before her.  Passing thus from her childish joys through the sixteen years of her girlhood, the grace of those softly flowing years when she knew no pain was eclipsed by the brightness of a memory precious though ill-fated.  The joyous peace of her childhood was far less sweet to her than a single one of the troubles scattered upon the last two years of her childhood,—­years that were rich in treasures now buried forever in her heart.

The vision brought her suddenly to that morning, that ravishing morning, when in the grand old parlor panelled and carved in oak, which served the family as a dining-room, she saw her handsome cousin for the first time.  Alarmed by the seditions in Paris, her mother’s family had sent the young courtier to Rouen, hoping that he could there be trained to the duties of the magistracy by his uncle, whose office might some day devolve upon him.  The countess smiled involuntarily as she remembered the haste with which she retired on seeing this relation whom she did not know.  But, in spite of the rapidity with which she opened and shut the door, a single glance had put into her soul so vigorous an impression of the scene that even at this moment she seemed to see it still occurring.  Her eye again wandered from the violet velvet mantle embroidered with gold and lined with satin to the spurs on the boots, the pretty lozenges slashed into the doublet, the trunk-hose, and the rich collaret which gave to view a throat as white as the lace around it.  She stroked with her hand the handsome face with its tiny pointed moustache, and “royale” as small as the ermine tips upon her father’s hood.

In the silence of the night, with her eyes fixed on the green silk curtains which she no longer saw, the countess, forgetting the storm, her husband, and her fears, recalled the days which seemed to her longer than years, so full were they,—­days when she loved, and was beloved!—­and the moment when, fearing her mother’s sternness, she had slipped one morning into her father’s study to whisper her girlish confidences on his knee, waiting for his smile at her caresses to say in his ear, “Will you scold me if I tell you something?” Once more she heard her father say, after a few questions in reply to which she spoke for the first time of her love, “Well, well, my child, we will think of it.  If he studies well, if he fits himself to succeed me, if he continues to please you, I will be on your side.”

After that she had listened no longer; she had kissed her father, and, knocking over his papers as she ran from the room, she flew to the great linden-tree where, daily, before her formidable mother rose, she met that charming cousin, Georges de Chaverny.

Faithfully the youth promised to study law and customs.  He laid aside the splendid trappings of the nobility of the sword to wear the sterner costume of the magistracy.