ey have placed the aigrette of flowers in her hair. There is actually
some expression in her glance, and I am almost persuaded that she--this
one--thinks.

Yves is astonished at her modest attitude, at her little timid airs of a
young girl on the verge of matrimony; he had imagined nothing like it in
such a connection as this, nor I either, I must confess.

"She is really very pretty, brother," said he; "very pretty, take my
word for it!"

These good folks, their customs, this scene, strike him dumb with
astonishment; he can not get over it, and remains in a maze. "Oh! this
is too much," he says, and the idea of writing a long letter to his wife
at Toulven, describing it all, diverts him greatly.

Chrysantheme and I join hands. Yves, too, advances and touches the
dainty little paw. After all, if I wed her, it is chiefly his fault;
I never should have remarked her without his observation that she was
pretty. Who can tell how this strange arrangement will turn out? Is it a
woman or a doll? Well, time will show.

The families, having lighted their many-colored lanterns swinging at the
ends of slight sticks, prepare to retire with many compliments, bows,
and curtseys. When it is a question of descending the stairs, no one is
willing to go first, and at a given moment, the whole party are again on
all fours, motionless and murmuring polite phrases in undertones.

"Haul back there!" said Yves, laughing, and employing a nautical term
used when there is a stoppage of any kind.

At length they all melt away, descending the stairs with a last buzzing
accompaniment of civilities and polite phrases finished from one step to
another in voices which gradually die away. He and I remain alone in the
unfriendly, empty apartment, where the mats are still littered with the
little cups of tea, the absurd little pipes, and the miniature trays.

"Let us watch them go away!" said Yves, leaning out. At the door of the
garden is a renewal of the same salutations and curtseys, and then the
two groups of women separate, their bedaubed paper lanterns fade away
trembling in the distance, balanced at the extremity of flexible canes
which they hold in their fingertips as one would hold a fishing-rod
in the dark to catch night-birds. The procession of the unfortunate
Mademoiselle Jasmin mounts upward toward the mountain, while that
of Mademoiselle Chrysantheme winds downward by a narrow old street,
half-stairway, half-goat-path, which leads to