e:

"If Mademoiselle had gone the same road that I did, with the same
conveyance, she would know that it is a rather thirsty stretch. I stopped
at the 'Femme-sans-Tete' to wash the dust down my parched throat.
Whereupon Mademoiselle Reine--the daughter of Madame Gobillot, the
landlady of the inn--Mademoiselle Reine asked me to allow her to look at
the yellow-journal in which there are fashions for ladies; I asked her
why; she said it was so that she might see how they made their bonnets,
gowns, and other finery in Paris. The frivolity of women!"

Mademoiselle de Corandeuil threw herself back in her chair and gave way
to an access of hilarity in which she rarely indulged.

"Mademoiselle Gobillot reading La Mode! Mademoiselle Gobillot talking of
gowns, shawls, and cashmeres! Clemence, what do you say to that? You will
see, she will be ordering her bonnets from Herbault! Ha! ha! This is what
is called the progress of civilization, the age of light!"

"Mademoiselle Gobillot," said Clemence, fixing a penetrating glance upon
the old man, "was not the only one who looked at La Mode. Was there no
other person in the tavern who saw it?"

"Madame," replied Rousselet, forced from his last refuge, "there were two
young men taking their refection, and one of them wore a beard no longer
than a goat's. Madame will pardon me if I allow myself to use this vulgar
expression, but Madame wished to know all."

"And the other young man?"

"The other had his facial epidermis shaved as close as a lady's or mine.
He was the one who held the journal while his comrade was smoking outside
the door."

Madame de Bergenheim made no further inquiries, but fell into a profound
revery. With eyes fixed upon the last number of La Mode, she seemed to
study the slightest lines of the sketch that had been made thereon, as if
she hoped to find a solution to the mystery. Her irregular breathing, and
the bright flush which tinged her usually pale cheeks, would have denoted
to an eye-witness one of those tempests of the heart, the physical
manifestations of which are like those of a fever. The pale winter flower
dying under the snow had suddenly raised its drooping head and recovered
its color; the melancholy against which the young woman had so vainly
struggled had disappeared as if by enchantment. A little bird surmounted
by a coronet, the whole rather badly sketched, was the strange talisman
that had produced this change.

"They were commercial trav