ench history with her wherever
she went, and to open it at every instant, in the omnibus, in the
street, even at the breakfast table; but, being already a young woman
and very pretty, she no longer had the mechanical memory of childhood
in which dates and events are incrusted forever. Amid her other
preoccupations the lesson would fly away in a moment, despite the
pupil's apparent application, her long lashes concealing her eyes, her
curls sweeping the page, and her rosy mouth twitching slightly at the
corners as she repeated again and again: "Louis le Hutin, 1314-1316.
Philippe V, le Long, 1316-1322--1322.--Oh! Grandmamma, I am lost. I
shall never learn them." Thereupon Grandmamma would take a hand, help
her to fix her attention, to store away some of those barbarous dates
in the Middle Ages, as sharp-pointed as the helmets of the warriors of
those days. And in the intervals of those manifold tasks, of that
general and constant superintendence, she found time to make pretty
things, to take from her work-basket some piece of knitting or
embroidery, which clung to her as steadfastly as young Elise to her
history of France. Even when she was talking, her fingers were never
unemployed for one moment.

"Do you never rest?" de Gery asked her while she counted in a whisper
the stitches of her embroidery, "three, four, five," in order to vary
the shades.

"Why, this work is rest," she replied. "You men have no idea how useful
needlework is to a woman's mind. It regularizes the thought, fixes with
a stitch the passing moment and what it carries with it. And think of
the sorrows that are soothed, the anxieties forgotten by the help of
this purely physical attention, this constant repetition of the same
movement, in which you find--and find very quickly, whether you will or
no--that your equilibrium is entirely restored. It does not prevent me
from hearing all that is said in my neighborhood, from listening to you
even more attentively than I should if I were idle--three, four, five."

Oh! yes, she listened. That was plain from the animation of her face,
from the way in which she would suddenly straighten herself up, with
her needle in the air and the thread stretched over her raised little
finger. Then she would suddenly resume her work, sometimes interjecting
a shrewd, thoughtful word, which as a general rule agreed with what
friend Paul thought. A similarity in their natures and in their
responsibilities and duties brought