I put up at the excellent inn “L’Etoile d’Orient,” and in the morning I went on ’Change and found M. Pels.  He told me he would think my business over, and finding M, d’O——­ directly afterwards he offered to do me my sixty bills and give me twelve per cent.  M. Pels told me to wait, as he said he could get me fifteen per cent.  He asked me to dinner, and, on my admiring his Cape wine, he told me with a laugh that he had made it himself by mixing Bordeaux and Malaga.

M. d’O——­ asked me to dinner on the day following; and on calling I found him with his daughter Esther, a young lady of fourteen, well developed for her age, and exquisite in all respects except her teeth, which were somewhat irregular.  M. d’O was a widower, and had this only child; consequently, Esther was heiress to a large fortune.  Her excellent father loved her blindly, and she deserved his love.  Her skin was snow white, delicately tinted with red; her hair was black as ebony, and she had the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.  She made an impression on me.  Her father had given her an excellent education; she spoke French perfectly, played the piano admirably, and was passionately fond of reading.

After dinner M. d’O——­ shewed me the uninhabited part of the house, for since the death of his wife, whose memory was dear to him, he lived on the ground floor only.  He shewed me a set of rooms where he kept a treasure in the way of old pottery.  The walls and windows were covered with plates of marble, each room a different colour, and the floors were of mosaic, with Persian carpets.  The dining-hall was cased in alabaster, and the table and the cupboards were of cedar wood.  The whole house looked like a block of solid marble, for it was covered with marble without as well as within, and must have cost immense sums.  Every Saturday half-a-dozen servant girls, perched on ladders, washed down these splendid walls.  These girls wore wide hoops, being obliged to put on breeches, as otherwise they would have interested the passers by in an unseemly manner.  After looking at the house we went down again, and M. d’O——­ left me alone with Esther in the antechamber, where he worked with his clerks.  As it was New Year’s Day there was not business going on.

After playing a sonata, Mdlle. d’O——­ asked me if I would go to a concert.  I replied that, being in her company, nothing could make me stir.  “But would you, mademoiselle, like to go?”

“Yes, I should like to go very well, but I cannot go by myself.”

“If I might presume to offer to escort you . . . but I dare not think you would accept.”

“I should be delighted, and if you were to ask my father I am sure he would not refuse his permission.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Quite sure, for otherwise he would be guilty of impoliteness, and my father would not do such a thing.  But I see you don’t know the manners of the country.”

“I confess I do not:”