Whereupon Israel walked off, whistling.

Monsieur Leclerc's soul was perturbed within him by these suggestions;
he pulled up two young cauliflowers and reset their places with
pigweeds; he hoed the nicely sloped border of the bed flat to the path,
and then flung the hoe across the walk, and went off to his daily
occupation with a new idea in his head. Nor was it an unpleasant one.
The idea of a transition from his squalid and pinching boarding-house to
the delicate comfort of Miss Lucinda's _menage_, the prospect of so kind
and good a wife to care for his hitherto dreaded future,--all this was
pleasant. I cannot honestly say he was in love with our friend; I must
even confess that whatever element of that nature existed between the
two was now all on Miss Lucinda's side, little as she knew it. Certain
it is, that, when she appeared that day at the dancing-class in a new
green calico flowered with purple, and bows on her slippers big enough
for a bonnet, it occurred to Monsieur Leclerc, that, if they were
married, she would take no more lessons! However, let us not blame him;
he was a man, and a poor one; one must not expect too much from men, or
from poverty; if they are tolerably good, let us canonize them even, it
is so hard for the poor creatures! And to do Monsieur Leclerc justice,
he had a very thorough respect and admiration for Miss Lucinda. Years
ago, in his stormy youth-time, there had been a pair of soft-fringed
eyes that looked into his as none would ever look again,--and they
murdered her, those mad wild beasts of Paris, in the chapel where she
knelt at her pure prayers,--murdered her because she knelt beside an
aristocrat, her best friend, the Duchess of Montmorenci, who had taken
the pretty peasant from her own estate to bring her up for her maid.
Jean Leclerc had lifted that pale shape from the pavement and buried it
himself; what else he buried with it was invisible; but now he recalled
the hour with a long, shuddering sigh, and, hiding his face in his
hands, said softly, "The violet is dead,--there is no spring for her. I
will have now an amaranth,--it is good for the tomb."

Whether Miss Lucinda's winter dress suggested this floral metaphor let
us not inquire. Sacred be sentiment,--when there is even a shadow of
reality about it!--when it becomes a profession, and confounds itself
with millinery and shades of mourning, it is--"bosh," as the Turkeys
say.

So that very evening Monsieur Leclerc arrayed