for all our children? Oh! then," exclaimed the dear
creature, beaming with joy, "there is my portrait--I give it to you! And
all my soul with it, too, and forever."

THE JENKINS PEARLS

About a week after his adventure with Moessard, that new complication in
the terrible muddle of his affairs, Jansoulet, on leaving the Chamber,
one Thursday, ordered his coachman to drive him to Mora's house. He had
not paid a visit there since the scuffle in the Rue Royale, and the idea
of finding himself in the duke's presence gave him, through his thick
skin, something of the panic that agitates a boy on his way upstairs
to see the head-master after a fight in the schoolroom. However, the
embarrassment of this first interview had to be gone through. They said
in the committee-rooms that Le Merquier had completed his report, a
masterpiece of logic and ferocity, that it meant an invalidation, and
that he was bound to carry it with a high hand unless Mora, so powerful
in the Assembly, should himself intervene and give him his word of
command. A serious matter, and one that made the Nabob's cheeks flush,
while in the curved mirrors of his brougham he studied his appearance,
his courtier's smiles, trying to think out a way of effecting a
brilliant entry, one of those strokes of good-natured effrontery which
had brought him fortune with Ahmed, and which served him likewise in his
relations with the French ambassador. All this accompanied by beatings
of the heart and by those shudders between the shoulder-blades which
precede decisive actions, even when these are settled within a gilded
chariot.

When he arrived at the mansion by the river, he was much surprised to
notice that the porter on the quay, as on the days of great receptions,
was sending carriages up the Rue de Lille, in order to keep a door free
for those leaving. Rather anxious, he wondered, "What is there going
on?" Perhaps a concert given by the duchess, a charity bazaar, some
festivity from which Mora might have excluded him on account of the
scandal of his last adventure. And this anxiety was augmented still
further when Jansoulet, after having passed across the principal
court-yard amid a din of slamming doors and a dull and continuous rumble
of wheels over the sand, found himself--after ascending the steps--in
the immense entrance-hall filled by a crowd which did not extend beyond
any of the doors leading to the rooms; centring its anxious going
and coming around t