"We could get one at an English library," suggested another.

"If there is any English library here," added a third, doubtfully.

Evidently that must be our first point of departure. We could ask for
information there. Accordingly we planned our crusade, as girls do,--the
elders smiling unbelief, as elders will,--and sallied out at last into
the summer sunshine, very brave in our hopes, very glad in our unwonted
liberty. A _commissionaire_ gave us the address of the bookstore we
sought as we were leaving the hotel. "There are no obstacles in the path
of the determined," we said, stepping out upon the Rue Royale. Across
the way was the grand park, a maze of winding avenues, shaded by lofty
trees, with nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs hiding among the shrubbery,
and with all the tortuous paths made into mosaic pavement by the
shimmering sunlight. But to Axelle _Villette_ was more real than that
June day.

"Do you remember," she said, "how Lucy Snow reached the city alone and
at night?--how a young English stranger conducted her across the park,
she following in his footsteps through the darkness, and hearing only
the tramp, tramp, before her, and the drip of the rain as it fell from
the soaked leaves? This must be the park."

When we had passed beyond its limits, we espied a little square, only a
kind of alcove in the street, in the centre of which was the statue of
some military hero. Behind it a quadruple flight of broad stone steps
led down into a lower and more quiet street. Facing us, as we looked
down, was a white stuccoed house, with a glimpse of a garden at one
side.

"See!" exclaimed Axelle, joyfully; "I believe this is the very place.
Don't you remember when they had come out from the park, and Lucy's
guide left her to find an inn near by, she ran,--being frightened,--and
losing her way, came at last to a flight of steps like these, which she
descended, and found, instead of the inn, the _pensionnat_ of Madame
Beck?" Only the superior discretion and worldly wisdom of the others
prevented Axelle from following in Lucy Snow's footsteps, and settling
the question of identity then and there. As it was, we went on to the
library, a stuffy little place, with a withered old man for sole
attendant, who, seated before a table in the back shop, was poring over
an old book. We darted in, making a bewildering flutter of wings, and
pecked him with a dozen questions at once, oddly inflected: "_Was_ the
scene of _Villette_