g is in full leaf and flower, and the whole population is out
of doors all day in the yellow sunshine and half the night under the
laughing moon and merry-twinkling stars--for the people of Paris think
that the moon was made for their chief torch-bearer, and that the
stars were set in the sky that Paris might be supplied with a handsome
set of girandoles. But I was not of that mind. For a long time after
Mademoiselle Lecouvreur's death, Count Saxe never spoke her name. He
longed to be away from Paris. In June, the King of Saxony, his father,
was to form a great camp at Radewitz, and Count Saxe, to his
satisfaction, was invited to attend. So, preparing for that event, in
which he was to take a considerable part, gave him some distraction
during that sad springtime of 1730. I wished him to leave Paris, too.
I never thought the air of that town agreed with his constitution.

Gaston Cheverny, as became a young man whose blood runs quick and red,
liked the springtime. He had not enough money to go to court often,
which he would have liked, so he put up with humbler pleasures. I do
not believe he could, to save his life, pass one of those impromptu
balls on the corner of the street, where the people, young and old,
dance to a pipe or a fiddle. He always joined in, and as he danced
with grace and skill, the little milliners' girls and the merry old
women always liked to have a fling with him.

We made many excursions on foot as well as on horseback, in those
hours when Count Saxe had no need of me. We often loitered past the
deserted garden of the Hotel Kirkpatrick, where the lilacs and
syringas drenched the air with perfume as on that spring afternoon,
four years before. Gaston would say to me:

"See yonder balcony--it was from that balcony Francezka bade me good
by. And look--the very guelder rose-bush by which I once spoke with
her, on coming to pay my respects to Madame Riano! I can conjure up
that charming Francezka as if she were before me now!"

So could I.

By the artful subterfuge of sending Madame Riano the news of Paris,
for which she thirsted, Gaston had been lucky enough to keep in
constant communication with the chateau of Capello. Madame Riano often
used Francezka as her amanuensis, and I grew to know her clear, firm
handwriting well. Her letters were written at Madame Riano's
dictation, but it was plain that Francezka managed to express in them
her own thoughts as well as Madame Riano's. She often spoke of