ng on Le Duc she had an imperious
little air which well became her.

"I shall dine in bed," said my Spaniard.

"You shall be attended to," said the pretty girl, and she went out.

"She puts on big airs," said Le Duc, "but that does not impose on me.
Don't you think she is very pretty?"

"I think you are very impudent. You ape your betters, and I don't approve
of it. Get up. You must wait on me at table, and afterwards you will eat
your dinner by yourself, and try to get yourself respected as an honest
man always is, whatever his condition, so long as he does not forget
himself. You must not stay any longer in this room, the doorkeeper will
give you another."

I went out, and on meeting the fair cousin I told her that I was jealous
of the honour which she had done my man, and that I begged her to wait on
him no longer.

"Oh, I am very glad!"

The door-keeper came up, and I gave him my orders, and went back to my
room to write.

Before dinner the baron came and told me that he had just come from the
lady to whom he had introduced me. She was the wife of a barrister named
Morin, and aunt to the young lady who had so interested me.

"I have been talking of you," said the baron, "and of the impression her
niece made on you. She promised to send for her, and to keep her at the
house all day."

After a dinner as good as the supper of the night before, though
different from it in its details, and appetising enough to awaken the
dead, we went to see Madame Morin, who received us with the easy grace of
a Parisian lady. She introduced me to seven children, of whom she was the
mother. Her eldest daughter, an ordinary-looking girl, was twelve years
old, but I should have taken her to be fourteen, and said so. To convince
me of her age the mother brought a book in which the year, the month, the
day, the hour, and even the minute of her birth were entered. I was
astonished at such minute accuracy, and asked if she had had a horoscope
drawn.

"No," said she, "I have never found anybody to do it."

"It is never too late," I replied, "and without doubt God has willed that
this pleasure should be reserved for me."

At this moment M. Morin came in, his wife introduced me, and after the
customary compliments had passed, she returned to the subject of the
horoscope. The barrister sensibly observed that if judicial astrology was
not wholly false, it was, nevertheless, a suspected science; that he had
been so foolish as once t