use and outbuildings, it was a case of revenge on the part of
Jacques Haret.

Gaston Cheverny having told all he had found out, and some impudent
duchess or countess coming to claim Count Saxe--no doubt, against his
will--Gaston and I were left alone. He sprang up, caught me by the
arm, and cried in a ringing voice:

"Babache, I am the happiest man alive. But come out of doors. This
room stifles me. I want to look at the stars--like Francezka's eyes. I
wish to breathe the perfumed air of the garden, because all
beauty--all perfume is like her." He dragged me out into the beautiful
old garden, with its tangled shrubbery, its grass-grown walks, its
myrtle trees, showing black against a pale night sky, and the great
river rolling past. I thought he would at once make me some great
confidence, for I had no doubt that he had won Francezka's love. But
instead of that he began to recite to me that poem, adored of lovers,
by Houdart de La Motte to Celimene, in which the poet yearns to be the
flower that reposes on the bosom of his beloved, the passing breeze
that kisses her cheek, the nightingale whose sad notes detain her in
the myrtle groves, the fair moon by which the shepherds bring home
their flocks. There is in every language I have known a great poem
with this thought, common to all hearts that love, running through it,
but I like this one of Houdart de La Motte's the best. When he had
finished repeating the lines, with great beauty of voice and meaning,
I asked him:

"Did not Mademoiselle Capello send me a message?"

"A thousand. Babache, Francezka loves you with all her heart. She told
me, at our last conversation, that she could never think of you
without remembering that night in her girlhood when she was taken to
the Temple, and from that moment she has reckoned you the most
faithful of friends."

"And how do you stand with her?" I ventured to ask.

"I can not utter a word concerning that. Only to you, Babache, will I
say that I am happier than I ever dared to hope."

"At least you can tell me how Francezka is situated."

"Oh, yes. Madame Riano has really started for Scotland. She left two
days after I got to Brabant. I saw her five times before she went. She
promises to return within a year. Francezka now has with her Madame
Chambellan, but she is old and feeble, and I know not how long the
arrangement will last."

Here was news indeed.

"Francezka has another friend at hand--good Bold. The rogue got a