es keep commonplace
books in which they enter passages that strike them in the works they
read; and you have but shown an exquisite taste in selecting this gem.
Do tell me where you found it. Is it somewhere in Lamartine?"

"No," answered Isaura, half inaudibly, and with an effort to withdraw
the paper. Savarin gently detained her hand, and looking earnestly into
her tell-tale face, divined her secret.

"It is your own, Signorina! Accept the congratulations of a very
practised and somewhat fastidious critic. If the rest of what you write
resembles this sentence, contribute to Rameau's journal, and I answer
for its success."

Rameau approached, half incredulous, half envious.

"My dear child," resumed Savarin, drawing away the manuscript from
Isaura's coy, reluctant clasp, "do permit me to cast a glance over these
papers. For what I yet know, there may be here more promise of fame than
even you could gain as a singer."

The electric chord in Isaura's heart was touched. Who cannot conceive
what the young writer feels, especially the young woman-writer, when
hearing the first cheery note of praise from the lips of a writer of
established fame?

"Nay, this cannot be worth your reading," said Isaura, falteringly; "I
have never written anything of the kind before, and this is a riddle to
me. I know not," she added, with a sweet low laugh, "why I began, nor
how I should end it."

"So much the better," said Savarin; and he took the manuscript, withdrew
to a recess by the farther window, and seated himself there, reading
silently and quickly, but now and then with a brief pause of reflection.

Rameau placed himself beside Isaura on the divan, and began talking with
her earnestly,--earnestly, for it was about himself and his aspiring
hopes. Isaura, on the other hand, more woman-like than author-like,
ashamed even to seem absorbed in herself and her hopes, and with her
back turned, in the instinct of that shame, against the reader of her
manuscript,--Isaura listened and sought to interest herself solely in
the young fellow-author. Seeking to do so she succeeded genuinely, for
ready sympathy was a prevalent characteristic of her nature.

"Oh," said Rameau, "I am at the turning-point of my life. Ever since
boyhood I have been haunted with the words of Andre Chenier on the
morning he was led to the scaffold 'And yet there was something here,'
striking his forehead. Yes, I, poor, low-born, launching myself headlong
in the c