suddenly became more
friendly.

"I thought you had just come. We have not been here so long," he added;
"my daughter has been a little out of sorts, and the doctor advised us to
travel for change of air. Paris is not healthful in this very hot
weather."

He looked hard at me to see whether his fib had taken me in. I replied,
with an air of the utmost conviction, "That is putting it mildly. Paris,
in July, is uninhabitable."

"That's it, Monsieur, uninhabitable; we were forced to leave it. We soon
made up our minds, and, in spite of the time of the year, we turned our
steps toward the home of the classics, to Italy, the museum of Europe.
And you really think, then, that by means of your good offices we should
have been admitted to the villa?"

"Yes, Monsieur, but owing only to the missive with which I am entrusted."

M. Charnot hesitated. He was probably thinking of the blot of ink, and
certainly of M. Mouillard's visit. But he doubtless reflected that Jeanne
knew nothing of the old lawyer's proceedings, that we were far from
Paris, that the opportunity was not to be lost; and in the end his
passion for numismatics conquered at once his resentment as a bookworm
and his scruples as a father.

"There is a later train at ten minutes to eight, father," said Jeanne.

"Well, dear, do you care to try your luck again, and return to the
assault of that Annia Faustina?"

"As you please, father."

We left the inn together by the by-road down the hill. I could not
believe my eyes. This old man with refined features who walked on my
left, leaning on his malacca cane, was M. Charnot. The same man who
received me so discourteously the day after I made my blot was now
relying on me to introduce him to an Italian nobleman; on me, a lawyer's
clerk. I led him on with confidence, and both of us, carried away by our
divers hopes, he dreaming of medals, I of the reopened horizon full of
possibilities, conversed on indifferent subjects with a freedom hitherto
unknown between us.

And this charming Parisienne, whose presence I divined rather than saw,
whom I dared not look in the face, who stepped along by her father's
side, light of foot, her eyes seeking the vault of heaven, her ear
attentive though her thoughts were elsewhere, catching her Parisian
sunshade in the hawthorns of Desio, was Jeanne, Jeanne of the
flower-market, Jeanne whom Lampron had sketched in the woods of St.
Germain! It did not seem possible.

Yet it was so,