ng motive, I should
never have run the risk of offending the countess, for if she ever came
to know that I had warned you----"

"And who would tell her, mademoiselle?" cried Raphael.

"True," the old maid answered. She looked at him, quaking like an owl
out in the sunlight. "But think of yourself," she went on; "several
young men, who want to drive you away from the baths, have agreed to
pick a quarrel with you, and to force you into a duel."

The elderly lady's voice sounded in the distance.

"Mademoiselle," began the Marquis, "my gratitude----" But his
protectress had fled already; she had heard the voice of her mistress
squeaking afresh among the rocks.

"Poor girl! unhappiness always understands and helps the unhappy,"
Raphael thought, and sat himself down at the foot of a tree.

The key of every science is, beyond cavil, the mark of interrogation; we
owe most of our greatest discoveries to a _Why_? and all the wisdom in
the world, perhaps, consists in asking _Wherefore_? in every connection.
But, on the other hand, this acquired prescience is the ruin of our
illusions.

So Valentin, having taken the old maid's kindly action for the text of
his wandering thoughts, without the deliberate promptings of philosophy,
must find it full of gall and wormwood.

"It is not at all extraordinary that a gentlewoman's gentlewoman should
take a fancy to me," said he to himself. "I am twenty-seven years old,
and I have a title and an income of two hundred thousand a year. But
that her mistress, who hates water like a rabid cat--for it would be
hard to give the palm to either in that matter--that her mistress should
have brought her here in a boat! Is not that very strange and wonderful?
Those two women came into Savoy to sleep like marmots; they ask if day
has dawned at noon; and to think that they could get up this morning
before eight o'clock, to take their chances in running after me!"

Very soon the old maid and her elderly innocence became, in his eyes, a
fresh manifestation of that artificial, malicious little world. It was a
paltry device, a clumsy artifice, a piece of priest's or woman's craft.
Was the duel a myth, or did they merely want to frighten him? But
these petty creatures, impudent and teasing as flies, had succeeded in
wounding his vanity, in rousing his pride, and exciting his curiosity.
Unwilling to become their dupe, or to be taken for a coward, and even
diverted perhaps by the little drama, he went t