the servants.  Some of the keepers worship him.  He has very good manners toward every one.  Me he avoids.  Still I meet him, sometimes in the cloakroom, oftener in the Rue Richelieu on his way to the Seine.  He stops, and so do I, near the Fontaine Moliere, to buy chestnuts.  We have this taste in common.  He buys two sous’ worth, I buy one; thus the distinctions of rank are preserved.  If he arrives after me, I allow him the first turn to be served; if he is before me, I await my turn with a patience which betokens respect.  Yet he never seems to notice it.  Once or twice, certainly, I fancied I caught a smile at the corners of his mouth, and a sly twinkle in the corners of his eyes; but these old scholars smile so austerely.

He must have guessed that I wish to meet him.  For I can not deny it.  I am looking out for an opportunity to repair my clumsy mistake and show myself in a less unfavorable light than I did at that ill-starred visit.  And she is the reason why I haunt his path!

Ever since M. Mouillard threatened me with Mademoiselle Berthe Lorinet, the graceful outlines of Mademoiselle Jeanne have haunted me with a persistence to which I have no objection.

It is not because I love her.  It does not go as far as that.  I am leaving her and leaving Paris forever in a few months.  No; the height of my desire is to see her again—­in the street, at the theatre, no matter where—­to show her by my behavior and, if possible, by my words that I am sorry for the past, and implore her forgiveness.  Then there will no longer be a gulf betwixt her and me, I shall be able to meet her without confusion, to invoke her image to put to flight that of Mademoiselle Lorinet without the vision of those disdainful lips to dash me.  She will be for me at once the type of Parisian grace and of filial affection.  I will carry off her image to the country like the remembered perfume of some rare flower; and if ever I sing ‘Hymen Hymnaee’! it shall be with one who recalls her face to me.

I do not think my feelings overpass these bounds.  Yet I am not quite sure.  I watch for her with a keenness and determination which surprise me, and the disappointment which follows a fruitless search is a shade too lively to accord with cool reason.

After all, perhaps my reason is not cool.

Let me see, I will make up the account of my ventures.

One January afternoon I walked up and down the Rue de l’Universite eight times in succession, from No. 1 to No. 107, and from No. 107 to No. 1.  Jeanne did not come out in spite of the brilliancy of the clear winter day.

On the nineteenth of the same month I went to see Andromache, although the classic writers, whom I swear by, are not the writers I most care to hear.  I renewed this attempt on the twenty-seventh.  Neither on the first nor on the second occasion did I see Mademoiselle Charnot.

And yet if the Institute does not escort its daughters in shoals to applaud Andromache, where on earth does it take them?