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

Perhaps nowhere.

Every time I cross the Tuileries Garden I run my eyes over the groups scattered among the chestnut-trees.  I see children playing and falling about; nursemaids who leave them crying; mothers who pick them up again; a vagrant guardsman.  No Jeanne.

To wind up, yesterday I spent five hours at the Bon Marche.

The spring show was on, one of the great occasions of the year; and I presumed, not without an apparent foundation of reason, that no young or pretty Parisian could fail to be there.  When I arrived, about one o’clock, the crowd already filled the vast bazaar.  It was not easy to stand against certain currents that set toward the departments consecrated to spring novelties.  Adrift like a floating spar I was swept away and driven ashore amid the baby-linen.  There it flung me high and dry among the shop-girls, who laughed at the spectacle of an undergraduate shipwrecked among the necessaries of babyhood.  I felt shy, and attaching myself to the fortunes of an Englishwoman, who worked her elbows with the vigor of her nation, I was borne around nearly twenty counters.  At last, wearied, mazed, dusty as with a long summer walk, I took refuge in the reading-room.

Poor simpleton!  I said to myself, you are too early; you might have known that.  She can not come with her father before the National Library closes.  Even supposing they take an omnibus, they will not get here before a quarter past four.

I had to find something to fill up the somewhat long interval which separated me from that happy moment.  I wrote a letter to my Uncle Mouillard, taking seven minutes over the address alone.  I had not shown such penmanship since I was nine years old.  When the last flourish was completed I looked for a paper; they were all engaged.  The directory was free.  I took it, and opened it at Ch.  I discovered that there were many Charnots in Paris without counting mine:  Charnot, grocer; Charnot, upholsterer; Charnot, surgical bandage-maker.  I built up a whole family tree for the member of the Institute, choosing, of course, those persons of the name who appeared most worthy to adorn its branches.  Of what followed I retain but a vague recollection.  I only remember that I felt twice as if some inquisitive individual were looking over my shoulder.  The third time I woke up with a start.

“Sir,” said a shopwalker, with the utmost politeness, “a gentleman has been waiting three quarters of an hour for the directory.  Would you kindly hand it to him if you have quite finished with it?”

It was a quarter to six.  I still waited a little while, and then I left, having wasted my day.

O Jeanne! where do you hide yourself?  Must I, to meet you, attend mass at St. Germain des Pres?  Are you one of those early birds who, before the world is up, are out in the Champs Elysees catching the first rays of the morning, and the country breeze before it is lost in the smoke of Paris?  Are you attending lectures at the Sorbonne?  Are you learning to sing? and, if so, who is your teacher?