flowers to those I love; I
never wish to receive them from hands dear to me. Mademoiselle St.
Pierre marked my empty hands--she could not believe I had been so
remiss; with avidity her eye roved over and round me: surely I must
have some solitary symbolic flower somewhere: some small knot of
violets, something to win myself praise for taste, commendation for
ingenuity. The unimaginative "Anglaise" proved better than the
Parisienne's fears: she sat literally unprovided, as bare of bloom or
leaf as the winter tree. This ascertained, Zelie smiled, well pleased.

"How wisely you have acted to keep your money, Miss Lucie," she said:
"silly I have gone and thrown away two francs on a bouquet of hot-house
flowers!"

And she showed with pride her splendid nosegay.

But hush! a step: _the_ step. It came prompt, as usual, but with a
promptitude, we felt disposed to flatter ourselves, inspired by other
feelings than mere excitability of nerve and vehemence of intent. We
thought our Professor's "foot-fall" (to speak romantically) had in it a
friendly promise this morning; and so it had.

He entered in a mood which made him as good as a new sunbeam to the
already well-lit first classe. The morning light playing amongst our
plants and laughing on our walls, caught an added lustre from M. Paul's
all-benignant salute. Like a true Frenchman (though I don't know why I
should say so, for he was of strain neither French nor Labassecourien),
he had dressed for the "situation" and the occasion. Not by the vague
folds, sinister and conspirator-like, of his soot-dark paletot were the
outlines of his person obscured; on the contrary, his figure (such as
it was, I don't boast of it) was well set off by a civilized coat and a
silken vest quite pretty to behold. The defiant and pagan bonnet-grec
had vanished: bare-headed, he came upon us, carrying a Christian hat in
his gloved hand. The little man looked well, very well; there was a
clearness of amity in his blue eye, and a glow of good feeling on his
dark complexion, which passed perfectly in the place of beauty: one
really did not care to observe that his nose, though far from small,
was of no particular shape, his cheek thin, his brow marked and square,
his mouth no rose-bud: one accepted him as he was, and felt his
presence the reverse of damping or insignificant.

He passed to his desk; he placed on the same his hat and gloves. "Bon
jour, mes amies," said he, in a tone that somehow made