said to her suspiciously, glancing
keenly at her from his lowering eyes. "I bet you've been up to some of
your tricks again!"

She shrugged her shoulders, but she trembled inwardly; and she did all
she could to regain her old appearance of rebellious martyrdom. However,
though Justin suspected some secret happiness, it was long before he was
able to discover how his victim had escaped him.

Silvere, on his side, enjoyed profound happiness. His daily meetings
with Miette made his idle hours pass pleasantly away. During his
long silent companionship with aunt Dide, he recalled one by one his
remembrances of the morning, revelling in their most trifling details.
From that time forward, the fulness of his heart cloistered him yet more
in the lonely existence which he had adopted with his grandmother. He
was naturally fond of hidden spots, of solitary retirement, where he
could give himself up to his thoughts. At this period already he had
eagerly begun to read all the old odd volumes which he could pick up at
brokers' shops in the Faubourg, and which were destined to lead him to
a strange and generous social religion and morality. His
reading--ill-digested and lacking all solid foundation--gave him
glimpses of the world's vanities and pleasures, especially with regard
to women, which would have seriously troubled his mind if his heart
had not been contented. When Miette came, he received her at first as
a companion, then as the joy and ambition of his life. In the evening,
when he had retired to the little nook where he slept, and hung his lamp
at the head of his strap-bedstead, he would find Miette on every page of
the dusty old volume which he had taken at random from a shelf above his
head and was reading devoutly. He never came across a young girl, a good
and beautiful creature, in his reading, without immediately identifying
her with his sweetheart. And he would set himself in the narrative as
well. If he were reading a love story, it was he who married Miette at
the end, or died with her. If, on the contrary, he were perusing some
political pamphlet, some grave dissertation on social economy, works
which he preferred to romances, for he had that singular partiality for
difficult subjects which characterises persons of imperfect scholarship,
he still found some means of associating her with the tedious themes
which frequently he could not even understand. For instance, he tried
to persuade himself that he was learnin