So saying, I offered her my lion, which she took, looked at in some embarrassment, and then, catching sight of the dedication, broke out with a cry.

‘Why, how did you know my name?’ she exclaimed.

‘When names are so appropriate, they should be easily guessed,’ said I, bowing.  ’But indeed, there was no magic in the matter.  A lady called you by name on the day I found your handkerchief, and I was quick to remark and cherish it.’

‘It is very, very beautiful,’ said she, ’and I shall be always proud of the inscription.—­Come, Ronald, we must be going.’  She bowed to me as a lady bows to her equal, and passed on (I could have sworn) with a heightened colour.

I was overjoyed:  my innocent ruse had succeeded; she had taken my gift without a hint of payment, and she would scarce sleep in peace till she had made it up to me.  No greenhorn in matters of the heart, I was besides aware that I had now a resident ambassador at the court of my lady.  The lion might be ill chiselled; it was mine.  My hands had made and held it; my knife—­or, to speak more by the mark, my rusty nail—­had traced those letters; and simple as the words were, they would keep repeating to her that I was grateful and that I found her fair.  The boy had looked like a gawky, and blushed at a compliment; I could see besides that he regarded me with considerable suspicion; yet he made so manly a figure of a lad, that I could not withhold from him my sympathy.  And as for the impulse that had made her bring and introduce him, I could not sufficiently admire it.  It seemed to me finer than wit, and more tender than a caress.  It said (plain as language), ’I do not and I cannot know you.  Here is my brother—­you can know him; this is the way to me—­follow it.’

CHAPTER II—­A TALE OF A PAIR OF SCISSORS

I was still plunged in these thoughts when the bell was rung that discharged our visitors into the street.  Our little market was no sooner closed than we were summoned to the distribution, and received our rations, which we were then allowed to eat according to fancy in any part of our quarters.

I have said the conduct of some of our visitors was unbearably offensive; it was possibly more so than they dreamed—­as the sight-seers at a menagerie may offend in a thousand ways, and quite without meaning it, the noble and unfortunate animals behind the bars; and there is no doubt but some of my compatriots were susceptible beyond reason.  Some of these old whiskerandos, originally peasants, trained since boyhood in victorious armies, and accustomed to move among subject and trembling populations, could ill brook their change of circumstance.  There was one man of the name of Goguelat, a brute of the first water, who had enjoyed no touch of civilisation beyond the military discipline, and had risen by an extreme heroism of bravery to a grade for which he was otherwise unfitted—­that