on a sort of dresser inside, bottles filled with
strangely-colored liquids oddly-shaped utensils of brass and copper, one
end of a large furnace, and other objects, which plainly proclaimed that
the apartment was used as a chemical laboratory.

"Think of our bride's brother amusing himself in such a place as that
with cooking drugs in saucepans," muttered Monsieur Justin, peeping into
the room. "I am the least particular man in the universe, but I must
say I wish we were not going to be connected by marriage with an amateur
apothecary. Pah! I can smell the place through the window."

With these words Monsieur Justin turned his back on the laboratory in
disgust, and sauntered toward the cliffs overhanging the river.

Leaving the garden attached to the house, he ascended some gently rising
ground by a winding path. Arrived at the summit, the whole view of the
Seine, with its lovely green islands, its banks fringed with trees, its
gliding boats, and little scattered water-side cottages, opened before
him. Westward, where the level country appeared beyond the further
bank of the river, the landscape was all aglow with the crimson of the
setting sun. Eastward, the long shadows and mellow intervening lights,
the red glory that quivered on the rippling water, the steady ruby fire
glowing on cottage windows that reflected the level sunlight, led the
eye onward and onward, along the windings of the Seine, until it rested
upon the spires, towers, and broadly-massed houses of Rouen, with the
wooded hills rising beyond them for background. Lovely to look on at
any time, the view was almost supernaturally beautiful now under the
gorgeous evening light that glowed up in it. All its attractions,
however, were lost on the valet; he stood yawning with his hands in
his pockets, looking neither to the right nor to the left, but staring
straight before him at a little hollow, beyond which the ground sloped
away smoothly to the brink of the cliff. A bench was placed here, and
three persons--an old lady, a gentleman, and a young girl--were seated
on it, watching the sunset, and by consequence turning their backs on
Monsieur Justin. Near them stood two gentlemen, also looking toward the
river and the distant view. These five figures attracted the valet's
attention, to the exclusion of every other object around him.

"There they are still," he said to himself, discontentedly. "Madame
Danville in the same place on the seat; my master, the br