Paulette is thin, pale, and miserably clad; but she has always the same open and straightforward look—­the same mouth, smiling at every word, as if to court your sympathy—­the same voice, somewhat timid, yet expressing fondness.  Paulette is not pretty—­she is even thought plain; as for me, I think her charming.  Perhaps that is not on her account, but on my own.  Paulette appears to me as one of my happiest recollections.

It was the evening of a public holiday.  Our principal buildings were illuminated with festoons of fire, a thousand flags waved in the night winds, and the fireworks had just shot forth their spouts of flame into the midst of the Champ de Mars.  Suddenly, one of those unaccountable alarms which strike a multitude with panic fell upon the dense crowd:  they cry out, they rush on headlong; the weaker ones fall, and the frightened crowd tramples them down in its convulsive struggles.  I escaped from the confusion by a miracle, and was hastening away, when the cries of a perishing child arrested me:  I reentered that human chaos, and, after unheard-of exertions, I brought Paulette out of it at the peril of my life.

That was two years ago:  since then I had not seen the child again but at long intervals, and I had almost forgotten her; but Paulette’s memory was that of a grateful heart, and she came at the beginning of the year to offer me her wishes for my happiness.  She brought me, besides, a wallflower in full bloom; she herself had planted and reared it:  it was something that belonged wholly to herself; for it was by her care, her perseverance, and her patience, that she had obtained it.

The wallflower had grown in a common pot; but Paulette, who is a bandbox-maker, had put it into a case of varnished paper, ornamented with arabesques.  These might have been in better taste, but I did not feel the attention and good-will the less.

This unexpected present, the little girl’s modest blushes, the compliments she stammered out, dispelled, as by a sunbeam, the kind of mist which had gathered round my mind; my thoughts suddenly changed from the leaden tints of evening to the brightest colors of dawn.  I made Paulette sit down, and questioned her with a light heart.

At first the little girl replied in monosyllables; but very soon the tables were turned, and it was I who interrupted with short interjections her long and confidential talk.  The poor child leads a hard life.  She was left an orphan long since, with a brother and sister, and lives with an old grandmother, who has “brought them up to poverty,” as she always calls it.