--quite alone. Having neither wish nor
power to force my way through a mass so close-packed, my station was on
the farthest confines, where, indeed, I might hear, but could see
little.

"Mademoiselle is not well placed," said a voice at my elbow. Who dared
accost _me_, a being in a mood so little social? I turned, rather to
repel than to reply. I saw a man--a burgher--an entire stranger, as I
deemed him for one moment, but the next, recognised in him a certain
tradesman--a bookseller, whose shop furnished the Rue Fossette with its
books and stationery; a man notorious in our pensionnat for the
excessive brittleness of his temper, and frequent snappishness of his
manner, even to us, his principal customers: but whom, for my solitary
self, I had ever been disposed to like, and had always found civil,
sometimes kind; once, in aiding me about some troublesome little
exchange of foreign money, he had done me a service. He was an
intelligent man; under his asperity, he was a good-hearted man; the
thought had sometimes crossed me, that a part of his nature bore
affinity to a part of M. Emanuel's (whom he knew well, and whom I had
often seen sitting on Miret's counter, turning over the current month's
publications); and it was in this affinity I read the explanation of
that conciliatory feeling with which I instinctively regarded him.

Strange to say, this man knew me under my straw-hat and closely-folded
shawl; and, though I deprecated the effort, he insisted on making a way
for me through the crowd, and finding me a better situation. He carried
his disinterested civility further; and, from some quarter, procured me
a chair. Once and again, I have found that the most cross-grained are
by no means the worst of mankind; nor the humblest in station, the
least polished in feeling. This man, in his courtesy, seemed to find
nothing strange in my being here alone; only a reason for extending to
me, as far as he could, a retiring, yet efficient attention. Having
secured me a place and a seat, he withdrew without asking a question,
without obtruding a remark, without adding a superfluous word. No
wonder that Professor Emanuel liked to take his cigar and his lounge,
and to read his feuilleton in M. Miret's shop--the two must have suited.

I had not been seated five minutes, ere I became aware that chance and
my worthy burgher friend had brought me once more within view of a
familiar and domestic group. Right before me sat the Brettons