opinions of his into practice,—­but the drudgery of the affair wearied him, and, beside, Babette had left his employment.  Still the Count took a kind of interest in his former pupil; and made some sort of arrangement by which Pierre was to be taught reading and writing, and accounts, and Heaven knows what besides,—­Latin, I dare say.  So Pierre, instead of being an innocent messenger, as he ought to have been—­(as Mr. Horner’s little lad Gregson ought to have been this morning)—­could read writing as well as either you or I. So what does he do, on obtaining the nosegay, but examine it well.  The stalks of the flowers were tied up with slips of matting in wet moss.  Pierre undid the strings, unwrapped the moss, and out fell a piece of wet paper, with the writing all blurred with moisture.  It was but a torn piece of writing-paper, apparently, but Pierre’s wicked mischievous eyes read what was written on it,—­written so as to look like a fragment,—­’Ready, every and any night at nine.  All is prepared.  Have no fright.  Trust one who, whatever hopes he might once have had, is content now to serve you as a faithful cousin;’ and a place was named, which I forget, but which Pierre did not, as it was evidently the rendezvous.  After the lad had studied every word, till he could say it off by heart, he placed the paper where he had found it, enveloped it in moss, and tied the whole up again carefully.  Virginie’s face coloured scarlet as she received it.  She kept smelling at it, and trembling:  but she did not untie it, although Pierre suggested how much fresher it would be if the stalks were immediately put into water.  But once, after his back had been turned for a minute, he saw it untied when he looked round again, and Virginie was blushing, and hiding something in her bosom.

“Pierre was now all impatience to set off and find his cousin, But his mother seemed to want him for small domestic purposes even more than usual; and he had chafed over a multitude of errands connected with the Hotel before he could set off and search for his cousin at his usual haunts.  At last the two met and Pierre related all the events of the morning to Morin.  He said the note off word by word. (That lad this morning had something of the magpie look of Pierre—­it made me shudder to see him, and hear him repeat the note by heart.) Then Morin asked him to tell him all over again.  Pierre was struck by Morin’s heavy sighs as he repeated the story.  When he came the second time to the note, Morin tried to write the words down; but either he was not a good, ready scholar, or his fingers trembled too much.  Pierre hardly remembered, but, at any rate, the lad had to do it, with his wicked reading and writing.  When this was done, Morin sat heavily silent.  Pierre would have preferred the expected outburst, for this impenetrable gloom perplexed and baffled him.  He had even to speak to his cousin to rouse him; and when he replied, what he said had so little apparent connection with the subject which Pierre had expected to find uppermost in his mind, that he was half afraid that his cousin had lost his wits.