ar. I renewed this attempt on the twenty-seventh. Neither on the first
nor on the second occasion did I see Mademoiselle Charnot.

And yet if the Institute does not escort its daughters in shoals to
applaud Andromache, where on earth does it take them?

Perhaps nowhere.

Every time I cross the Tuileries Garden I run my eyes over the groups
scattered among the chestnut-trees. I see children playing and falling
about; nursemaids who leave them crying; mothers who pick them up again;
a vagrant guardsman. No Jeanne.

To wind up, yesterday I spent five hours at the Bon Marche.

The spring show was on, one of the great occasions of the year; and I
presumed, not without an apparent foundation of reason, that no young
or pretty Parisian could fail to be there. When I arrived, about one
o'clock, the crowd already filled the vast bazaar. It was not easy
to stand against certain currents that set toward the departments
consecrated to spring novelties. Adrift like a floating spar I was swept
away and driven ashore amid the baby-linen. There it flung me high
and dry among the shop-girls, who laughed at the spectacle of an
undergraduate shipwrecked among the necessaries of babyhood. I felt shy,
and attaching myself to the fortunes of an Englishwoman, who worked her
elbows with the vigor of her nation, I was borne around nearly twenty
counters. At last, wearied, mazed, dusty as with a long summer walk, I
took refuge in the reading-room.

Poor simpleton! I said to myself, you are too early; you might have
known that. She can not come with her father before the National Library
closes. Even supposing they take an omnibus, they will not get here
before a quarter past four.

I had to find something to fill up the somewhat long interval which
separated me from that happy moment. I wrote a letter to my Uncle
Mouillard, taking seven minutes over the address alone. I had not shown
such penmanship since I was nine years old. When the last flourish was
completed I looked for a paper; they were all engaged. The directory was
free. I took it, and opened it at Ch. I discovered that there were
many Charnots in Paris without counting mine: Charnot, grocer; Charnot,
upholsterer; Charnot, surgical bandage-maker. I built up a whole family
tree for the member of the Institute, choosing, of course, those persons
of the name who appeared most worthy to adorn its branches. Of what
followed I retain but a vague recollection. I only remember that I fe