the other the sweet little foot of Miss Cardoville, busied herself in fitting it with a remarkably small shoe of black satin, and crossed its slender ties over a silk stocking of a pale yet rosy flesh color, which imprisoned the smallest and finest ankle in the world.  Florine, a little farther back, presented to her mistress, in a jeweled box, a perfumed paste, with which Adrienne slightly rubbed her dazzling hands and outspread fingers, which seemed tinted with carmine to their extremities.  Let us not forget Frisky, who, couched in the lap of her mistress, opened her great eyes with all her might, and seemed to observe the different operations of Adrienne’s toilette with grave and reflective attention.  A silver bell being sounded from without, Florine, at a sign from her mistress, went out and presently returned, bearing a letter upon a small silver-gilt salve.  Adrienne, while her women continued fitting on her shoes, dressing her hair, and arranging her in her habiliments, took the letter, which was written by the steward of the estate of Cardoville, and read aloud as follows: 

“Honored madame,

“Knowing your goodness of heart and generosity, I venture to address you with respectful confidence.  During twenty years I served the late Count and Duke of Cardoville, your noble father, I believe I may truly say, with probity and zeal.  The castle is now sold; so that I and my wife, in our old age, behold ourselves about to be dismissed, and left destitute of all resources:  which, alas! is very hard at our time of life.”

“Poor creature!” said Adrienne, interrupting herself in reading:  “my father, certainly, always prided himself upon their devotion to him, and their probity.”  She continued: 

“There does, indeed, remain to us a means of retaining our place here; but it would constrain us to be guilty of baseness; and, be the consequences to us what they may, neither I nor my wife wish to purchase our bread at such a price.”

“Good, very good,” said Adrienne, “always the same—­dignity even in poverty—­it is the sweet perfume of a flower, not the less sweet because it has bloomed in a meadow.”

“In order to explain to you, honored madame, the unworthy task exacted from us, it is necessary to inform you, in the first place, that M. Rodin came here from Paris two days ago.”

“Ah!  M. Rodin!” said Mademoiselle de Cardoville, interrupting herself anew; “the secretary of Abbe d’Aigrigny!  I am not at all surprised at him being engaged in a perfidious or black intrigue.  But let us see.”

“M.  Rodin came from Paris to announce to us that the estate was sold, and that he was sure of being able to obtain our continuance in our place, if we would assist him in imposing a priest not of good character upon the new proprietress as her future confessor; and if, the better to attain this end, we would consent to calumniate another priest, a deserving and excellent man, much loved and much respected in