gue, I beg of you, grandmamma!"

And, on her knees, with tears in her eyes, she prayed to Heaven to bestow
on her a great passion, one sole, eternal passion in accordance with the
dream of modern poets, while the grandmother, kissing her on the
forehead, quite imbued still with that charming, healthy reason with
which gallant philosophers tinctured the thought of the eighteenth
century, murmured:

"Take care, my poor darling! If you believe in such folly as that, you
will be very unhappy."

FRIEND JOSEPH

They had been great friends all winter in Paris. As is always the case,
they had lost sight of each other after leaving school, and had met again
when they were old and gray-haired. One of them had married, but the
other had remained in single blessedness.

M. de Meroul lived for six months in Paris and for six months in his
little chateau at Tourbeville. Having married the daughter of a
neighboring, squire, he had lived a good and peaceful life in the
indolence of a man who has nothing to do. Of a calm and quiet
disposition, and not over-intelligent he used to spend his time quietly
regretting the past, grieving over the customs and institutions of the
day and continually repeating to his wife, who would lift her eyes, and
sometimes her hands, to heaven, as a sign of energetic assent: "Good
gracious! What a government!"

Madame de Meroul resembled her husband intellectually as though she had
been his sister. She knew, by tradition, that one should above all
respect the Pope and the King!

And she loved and respected them from the bottom of her heart, without
knowing them, with a poetic fervor, with an hereditary devotion, with the
tenderness of a wellborn woman. She was good to, the marrow of her bones.
She had had no children, and never ceased mourning the fact.

On meeting his old friend, Joseph Mouradour, at a ball, M. de Meroul was
filled with a deep and simple joy, for in their youth they had been
intimate friends.

After the first exclamations of surprise at the changes which time had
wrought in their bodies and countenances, they told each other about
their lives since they had last met.

Joseph Mouradour, who was from the south of France, had become a
government official. His manner was frank; he spoke rapidly and without
restraint, giving his opinions without any tact. He was a Republican, one
of those good fellows who do not believe in standing on ceremony, and who
exercise an almost bruta