ing on to it, and Jeanne's room was quite at the end, on
the right. The baron had just had it freshly furnished by simply using
some hangings and furniture that had been stored away in a garret. Very
old Flemish tapestry peopled the room with strange characters, and when
she saw the bed Jeanne gave a cry of delight. At the four corners four
birds of carved oak, quite black and polished till they shone, supported
the bed, looking as though they were its guardians. The sides were
decorated with two large garlands of carved flowers and fruit; and the
four bed-posts, finely fluted and crowned with Corinthian capitals,
supported a cornice of entwined roses and cupids. It was a monumental
couch, and yet was very graceful, despite the somber appearance of the
wood darkened by age. The counterpane and canopy, made of old dark blue
silk, starred here and there with great _fleurs de lis_ embroidered in
gold, sparkled like two firmaments.

When she had finished admiring the bed, Jeanne, raising her light,
examined the tapestry, trying to discover the subject of the design.

A young nobleman and a young lady, dressed in the strangest way in
green, red, and yellow, were talking under a blue tree on which white
fruit was ripening. A big rabbit of the same color as the fruit was
nibbling a little gray grass. Just above the figures, in a conventional
distance, five little round houses with pointed roofs could be seen, and
up at the top, nearly in the sky, was a red wind-mill. Great branches
of flowers twined in and out over the whole.

The next two panels were very like the first, except that out of the
houses came four little men, dressed in Flemish costume, who raised
their heads to heaven as if to denote their extreme surprise and anger.
But the last set of hangings depicted a drama. Near the rabbit, which
was still nibbling, the young man was stretched out, apparently dead.
The young lady, with her eyes fixed on him, was thrusting a sword into
her breast, and the fruit on the tree had become black.

Jeanne was just giving up trying to understand it when she discovered in
a corner a microscopic animal, which the rabbit could have eaten as
easily as a blade of grass, and which was meant for a lion. Then she
recognized the misfortunes of Pyramis and Thisbe; and, although she
smiled at the simplicity of the designs, she felt happy at being
surrounded by these pictures which would always accord with her dearest
hopes; and at the thou