who understood the situation, this contrast between the ignorance of some and the palpitating interest of others would have seemed quite poetic.  Nowadays romance-writers arrange such effects; and it is quite within their province to do so, for nature in all ages takes the liberty to be stronger than they.  In this instance, as you will see, nature, social nature, which is a second nature within nature, amused herself by making truth more interesting than fiction; just as mountain torrents describe curves which are beyond the skill of painters to convey, and accomplish giant deeds in displacing or smoothing stones which are the wonder of architects and sculptors.

It was eight o’clock.  At that season twilight was still shedding its last gleams; there was not a cloud in the sky; the balmy air caressed the earth, the flowers gave forth their fragrance, the steps of pedestrians turning homeward sounded along the gravelly road, the sea shone like a mirror, and there was so little wind that the wax candles upon the card-tables sent up a steady flame, although the windows were wide open.  This salon, this evening, this dwelling—­what a frame for the portrait of the young girl whom these persons were now studying with the profound attention of a painter in presence of the Margharita Doni, one of the glories of the Pitti palace.  Modeste,—­blossom enclosed, like that of Catullus,—­was she worth all these precautions?

You have seen the cage; behold the bird!  Just twenty years of age, slender and delicate as the sirens which English designers invent for their “Books of Beauty,” Modeste was, like her mother before her, the captivating embodiment of a grace too little understood in France, where we choose to call it sentimentality, but which among German women is the poetry of the heart coming to the surface of the being and spending itself—­in affectations if the owner is silly, in divine charms of manner if she is “spirituelle” and intelligent.  Remarkable for her pale golden hair, Modeste belonged to the type of woman called, perhaps in memory of Eve, the celestial blonde; whose satiny skin is like a silk paper applied to the flesh, shuddering at the winter of a cold look, expanding in the sunshine of a loving glance, —­teaching the hand to be jealous of the eye.  Beneath her hair, which was soft and feathery and worn in many curls, the brow, which might have been traced by a compass so pure was its modelling, shone forth discreet, calm to placidity, and yet luminous with thought:  when and where could another be found so transparently clear or more exquisitely smooth?  It seemed, like a pearl, to have its orient.  The eyes, of a blue verging on gray and limpid as the eyes of a child, had all the mischief, all the innocence of childhood, and they harmonized well with the arch of the eyebrows, faintly indicated by lines like those made with a brush on Chinese faces.  This candor of the soul was still further evidenced around the eyes, in their corners, and about the temples, by