"

"And yet you are not curious to know more?"

"_Mon cher_, it is dangerous to be too curious, _je suis un pretre_."

Some days after--it was on a winter's morning, when a little snow had
fallen--I chanced to glance over into the court on which the
mysterious window looked, and saw the beautiful foot-mark of a lady's
slipper. It was scarce longer than my hand--too narrow and delicately
formed for a child's foot, least of all the foot of such children as
belonged to the Rue de Seine. I could not but associate the
foot-track--so small, so beautiful, and so unlocked for in such
scene--with the veil I had seen at the window.

Through all of my morning's lesson--I was then reading _La Grammaire
des Grammaires_--I could think of nothing but the pretty foot-track in
the snow. No such foot, I was quite sure, could be seen in the dirty
Rue de Seine--not even the shop-girls of the Rue de la Paix, or the
tidiest Llorettes could boast of one so pretty.

I asked the abbe to walk with me; and as we passed the corridor, I
threw my eye carelessly into the court, as if it were only my first
observation, and said as quietly as possible, "_Mon cher abbe_, the
snow tells tales this morning."

The abbe looked curiously down upon the foot-marks, ran his eye
rapidly over the windows, turned to me, shook his head expressively,
and said, as he glanced down again, "_O'etait un fort joli petit
soulier._" (It was a very pretty little shoe.)

"Whose was it?" said I.

"_Mon cher_, I do not know."

I still kept up, day after day, my watch upon the window. It shortly
supplied me with an important link in the chain of observations. I saw
lying within the glass, against which the veil yet hung, nothing more
nor less than the same little shoe, I thoroughly believed, which had
made the delicate foot-marks on the snow in the court. Not a prettier
shoe could be seen on the Boulevards, and scarce one so small. It
would have been very strange to see such delicate articles of dress at
any hotels of the neighborhood, and stranger still to find them in
the humblest window of so dismal a court.

There was a mystery about the matter that perplexed me. Every one
knows, who knows any thing about Paris, that that part of the city
along the Rue de Seine, between the Rues Jacob and Bussy, and though
very reputable in its way, is yet no place for delicate ladies, not
even as a promenade, and much less as a residence. It is assigned
over, as well by common