a Polish song which held
Godefroid dumb with admiration and also with sadness. This melody, which
greatly resembles the long drawn out melancholy airs of Brittany, is one
of those poems which vibrate in the heart long after the ear has heard
them. As he listened, Godefroid looked at Vanda, but he could not endure
the ecstatic glance of that fragment of a woman, partially insane, and
his eyes wandered to two cords which hung one on each side of the canopy
of the bed.

"Ah ha!" laughed Vanda, noticing his look, "do you want to know what
those cords are for?"

"Vanda!" said her father, hastily, "calm yourself, my daughter. See!
here comes tea. That, monsieur," he continued, turning to Godefroid,
"is rather a costly affair. My daughter cannot rise, and therefore it is
difficult to change her sheets. Those cords are fastened to pulleys; by
slipping a square of leather beneath her and drawing it up by the four
corners with these pulleys, we are able to make her bed without fatigue
to her or to ourselves."

"They swing me!" cried Vanda, gaily.

Happily, Auguste now came in with a teapot, which he placed on a table,
together with the Sevres tea-set; then he brought cakes and sandwiches
and cream. This sight diverted his mother's mind from the nervous crisis
which seemed to threaten her.

"See, Vanda, here is Nathan's new novel. If you wake in the night you
will have something to read."

"Oh! delightful! 'La Perle de Dol;' it must be a love-story,--Auguste, I
have something to tell you! I'm to have an accordion!"

Auguste looked up suddenly with a strange glance at his grandfather.

"See how he loves his mother!" cried Vanda. "Come and kiss me, my
kitten. No, it is not your grandfather you are to thank, but monsieur,
who is good enough to lend me one. I am to have it to-morrow. How are
they made, monsieur?"

Godefroid, at a sign from the old man, explained an accordion at length,
while sipping the tea which Auguste brought him and which was in truth,
exquisite.

About half-past ten o'clock he retired, weary of beholding the desperate
struggle of the son and father, admiring their heroism, and the daily,
hourly patience with which they played their double parts, each equally
exhausting.

"Well," said Monsieur Bernard, who followed him home, "you now see,
monsieur, the life I live. I am like a thief, on the watch all the time.
A word, a gesture might kill my daughter; a mere gewgaw less than she
is accustomed to se