ecollections.

It was the evening of a public holiday. Our principal buildings were
illuminated with festoons of fire, a thousand flags waved in the night
winds, and the fireworks had just shot forth their spouts of flame into
the midst of the Champ de Mars. Suddenly, one of those unaccountable
alarms which strike a multitude with panic fell upon the dense crowd:
they cry out, they rush on headlong; the weaker ones fall, and the
frightened crowd tramples them down in its convulsive struggles. I
escaped from the confusion by a miracle, and was hastening away, when
the cries of a perishing child arrested me: I reentered that human
chaos, and, after unheard-of exertions, I brought Paulette out of it at
the peril of my life.

That was two years ago: since then I had not seen the child again but
at long intervals, and I had almost forgotten her; but Paulette's memory
was that of a grateful heart, and she came at the beginning of the year
to offer me her wishes for my happiness. She brought me, besides, a
wallflower in full bloom; she herself had planted and reared it: it was
something that belonged wholly to herself; for it was by her care, her
perseverance, and her patience, that she had obtained it.

The wallflower had grown in a common pot; but Paulette, who is a
bandbox-maker, had put it into a case of varnished paper, ornamented
with arabesques. These might have been in better taste, but I did not
feel the attention and good-will the less.

This unexpected present, the little girl's modest blushes, the
compliments she stammered out, dispelled, as by a sunbeam, the kind of
mist which had gathered round my mind; my thoughts suddenly changed
from the leaden tints of evening to the brightest colors of dawn. I made
Paulette sit down, and questioned her with a light heart.

At first the little girl replied in monosyllables; but very soon
the tables were turned, and it was I who interrupted with short
interjections her long and confidential talk. The poor child leads a
hard life. She was left an orphan long since, with a brother and sister,
and lives with an old grandmother, who has "brought them up to poverty,"
as she always calls it.

However, Paulette now helps her to make bandboxes, her little sister
Perrine begins to use the needle, and her brother Henry is apprentice
to a printer. All would go well if it were not for losses and want of
work--if it were not for clothes which wear out, for appetites which
grow large