ar relation had been beheaded; it was a sort of
herald's office to the scaffold; and to shew their gratitude for their
inheritance, they invented a peculiar mode of salutation. A gentleman
would go up to a lady, and jerk his head forwards, as if he dropped it,
and the lady would do the same. They called it Salut a la victime; and
all this with fiddling and dancing, and wax-lights and champagne. I do
not admire that style of thing myself; it was a fashion like any other,
and not a pretty one, I think; but I really do see no improvement in
young people's babbling of the sanctity of family ties, and of their
duty to their fathers, and forefathers, and sighing in secret for their
turn to come, even if without the connivance of a Robespierre.'"

"I left the room, for I could not hear him speak in such a way, to such
a son. I waited in the antechamber till Count Ernest came out to go to
bed. He was sad and silent, and would have passed without noticing me,
but I took up my light, and followed him. In the passage he suddenly
stopped and looked eagerly up the staircase, that was well lighted with
a two-branched lamp. 'What now?' thinks I--and then I saw Mamsell
Gabrielle coming down from the loft with some plate she had been to
fetch, and pass us on her way downstairs. When she had quite
disappeared; 'Who is that, Flor?' says he, quickly turning to me--'Who
is that lady?'

"When I told him, he shook his head. 'Can it be the same?' he murmured,
'or can I be so far mistaken?' And then after a while, when I had come
into his room with him: 'Flor,' he said, 'I am right; she was only on a
visit to X, when she was at that ball, and she left it again soon
after. _Both_ parents did you say?--and so poor,--so friendless--that
she was forced to go to service?--'

"'She wants for nothing here;' I said, to pacify him; for then I saw at
once that she was that old flame of his, for whom he had pined so long.
'My dear young master,' I said, 'she could never be better off than she
is here. His honor is very kind to her, and will have her treated with
the greatest consideration and respect.'

"But he did not seem to hear me; he was sitting there in that great
arm-chair by the open window--thinking, and thinking, till he made me
feel quite nervous. He appeared to be so troubled in his mind, as all
the past came over him, and all that he thought he had forgotten.

"The old rooms again; the tapestry with the hunting scenes; the
furniture he h