es of the place declare. She was called the _little_ Marietta; yet
she was not smaller than a girl of seventeen or thereabout ought to be,
seeing that her forehead just reached up to the lips of a grown man.

The chronicles aforesaid had very good ground for speaking of Marietta.
I, had I stood in the shoes of the chronicler, would have done the
same. For Marietta, who until lately had lived with her mother Manon
at Avignon, when she came back to her birthplace, quite upset the whole
village. Verily, not the houses, but the people and their heads; and not
the heads of all the people, but of those particularly whose heads and
hearts are always in danger when in the neighborhood of two bright eyes.
I know very well that such a position is no joke.

Mother Manon would have done much better if she had remained at Avignon.
But she had been left a small inheritance, by which she received at
Napoule an estate consisting of some vine-hills, and a house that lay in
the shadow of a rock, between certain olive trees and African acacias.
This is a kind of thing which no unprovided widow ever rejects; and,
accordingly, in her own estimation, she was as rich and happy as though
she were the Countess of Provence or something like it.

So much the worse was it for the good people of Napoule. They never
suspected their misfortune, not having read in Homer how a single pretty
woman had filled all Greece and Lesser Asia with discord and war.

HOW THE MISFORTUNE CAME ABOUT.

Marietta had scarcely been fourteen days in the house, between the olive
trees and the African acacias, before every young man of Napoule knew
that she lived there, and that there lived not, in all Provence, a more
charming girl than the one in that house.

Went she through the village, sweeping lightly along like a dressed-up
angel, her frock, with its pale-green bodice, and orange leaves and
rosebuds upon the bosom of it, fluttering in the breeze, and flowers
and ribbons waving about the straw bonnet, which shaded her beautiful
features--yes, then the grave old men spake out, and the young ones were
struck dumb. And everywhere, to the right and left, little windows and
doors were opened with a "Good morning," or a "Good evening, Marietta,"
as it might be, while she nodded to the right and left with a pleasant
smile.

If Marietta walked into church, all hearts (that is, of the young
people) forgot Heaven; all eyes turned from the saints, and the
worshipin