d
then went themselves on the sly. It was an infatuation. The fact is,
that they said things fit to astonish a cardinal. Mothers triumphed
greatly over their little ones after the Egyptians had read in their
hands all sorts of marvels written in pagan and in Turkish. One had an
emperor; another, a pope; another, a captain. Poor Chantefleurie was
seized with curiosity; she wished to know about herself, and whether
her pretty little Agnes would not become some day Empress of Armenia,
or something else. So she carried her to the Egyptians; and the Egyptian
women fell to admiring the child, and to caressing it, and to kissing it
with their black mouths, and to marvelling over its little band, alas!
to the great joy of the mother. They were especially enthusiastic over
her pretty feet and shoes. The child was not yet a year old. She already
lisped a little, laughed at her mother like a little mad thing, was
plump and quite round, and possessed a thousand charming little gestures
of the angels of paradise.

"She was very much frightened by the Egyptians, and wept. But her mother
kissed her more warmly and went away enchanted with the good fortune
which the soothsayers had foretold for her Agnes. She was to be a
beauty, virtuous, a queen. So she returned to her attic in the Rue
Folle-Peine, very proud of bearing with her a queen. The next day she
took advantage of a moment when the child was asleep on her bed, (for
they always slept together), gently left the door a little way open, and
ran to tell a neighbor in the Rue de la Sechesserie, that the day would
come when her daughter Agnes would be served at table by the King of
England and the Archduke of Ethiopia, and a hundred other marvels. On
her return, hearing no cries on the staircase, she said to herself:
'Good! the child is still asleep!' She found her door wider open than
she had left it, but she entered, poor mother, and ran to the bed.---The
child was no longer there, the place was empty. Nothing remained of the
child, but one of her pretty little shoes. She flew out of the room,
dashed down the stairs, and began to beat her head against the wall,
crying: 'My child! who has my child? Who has taken my child?' The street
was deserted, the house isolated; no one could tell her anything about
it. She went about the town, searched all the streets, ran hither and
thither the whole day long, wild, beside herself, terrible, snuffing at
doors and windows like a wild beast whic