toms of its universities, ending by some allusion to the state of
matters between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

"Good heavens! And could you do it?" said Giselle, whose knowledge of
history was limited to what may be found in school abridgments.

It was therefore a great satisfaction to her when Fred declared that he
never should have known how to set about it.

"Oh! papa helped me a little," said Isabelle, whose father wrote articles
much appreciated by the public in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' "But he
said at the same time that it was horrid to give such crack-brained stuff
to us poor girls. Happily, our subject this week is much nicer. We have
to make comparisons between La Tristesse d'Olympio, Souvenir, and Le
Lac'. That will be something interesting."

"The Tristesse d'Olympio?" repeated Giselle, in a tone of interrogation.

"You know, of course, that it is Victor Hugo's," said Mademoiselle de
Wermant, with a touch of pity.

Giselle answered with sincerity and humility, "I only knew that Le Lac
was by Lamartine."

"Well!--she knows that much," whispered Belle to Yvonne--"just that
much, anyhow."

While they were whispering and laughing, Jacqueline recited, in a soft
voice, and with feeling that did credit to her instructor in elocution,
Mademoiselle X----, of the Theatre Francais:

May the moan of the wind, the green rushes' soft sighing,
The fragrance that floats in the air you have moved,
May all heard, may all breathed, may all seen, seem but trying
To say: They have loved.

Then she added, after a pause: "Isn't that beautiful?"

"How dares she say such words?" thought Giselle, whose sense of propriety
was outraged by this allusion to love. Fred, too, looked askance and was
not comfortable, for he thought that Jacqueline had too much assurance
for her age, but that, after all, she was becoming more and more
charming.

At that moment Belle and Yvonne were summoned, and they departed, full of
an intention to spread everywhere the news that Giselle, the little
goose, had actually known that Le Lac had been written by Lamartine. The
Benedictine Sisters positively had acquired that much knowledge.

These girls were not the only persons that day at the reception who
indulged in a little ill-natured talk after going away. Mesdames d'Argy
and de Monredon, on their way to the Faubourg St. Germain, criticised
Madame de Nailles pretty freely. As they crossed the Parc Monceau to
reac