king his ban.

Luckily for this hopeless lover, a beneficent fairy was watching over
him, and the evening before the day on which the young girl was to make
her decision the following affair took place.

It was Sunday, the day on which the Thuilliers still kept up their
weekly receptions.

Madame Phellion, convinced that the housekeeping leakage, vulgarly
called "the basket dance," was the ruin of the best-regulated
households, was in the habit of going in person to her tradespeople.
From time immemorial in the Phellion establishment, Sunday was the
day of the "pot-au-feu," and the wife of the great citizen, in that
intentionally dowdy costume in which good housekeepers bundle themselves
when they go to market, was prosaically returning from a visit to the
butcher, followed by her cook and the basket, in which lay a magnificent
cut of the loin of beef. Twice had she rung her own doorbell, and
terrible was the storm gathering on the head of the foot-boy, who by
his slowness in opening the door was putting his mistress in a situation
less tolerable than that of Louis XIV., who had only _almost_ waited. In
her feverish impatience Madame Phellion had just given the bell a third
and ferocious reverberation, when, judge of her confusion, a little
coupe drew up with much clatter at the door of her house, and a lady
descended, whom she recognized, at this untimely hour, as the elegant
Comtesse Torna de Godollo!

Turning a purplish scarlet, the unfortunate bourgeoise lost her head,
and, floundering in excuses, she was about to complicate the position
by some signal piece of awkwardness, when, happily for her, Phellion,
attracted by the noise of the bell, and attired in a dressing-gown and
Greek cap, came out of his study to inquire what was the matter. After
a speech, the pompous charm of which did much to compensate for his
dishabille, the great citizen, with the serenity that never abandoned
him, offered his hand very gallantly to the lady, and having installed
her in the salon, said:--

"May I, without indiscretion, ask Madame la comtesse what has procured
for us the unhoped-for advantage of this visit?"

"I have come," said the lady, "to talk with Madame Phellion on a matter
which must deeply interest her. I have no other way of meeting her
without witnesses; and therefore, though I am hardly known to Madame
Phellion, I have taken the liberty to call upon her here."

"Madame, your visit is a great honor to this poor