y. As often as my way led me near to
where she lived, and that was almost daily at the same hour, I looked
in at her window and found her always occupied with some sort of work.
We chatted for a quarter of an hour; she told me what animated her day,
asked me about everything that interested her in my existence, and
initiated me into the sphere of her domestic cares. It pleased her that
my needs were few; but that I did not even feel the need of damming up
the briskly flowing stream of my income and making a little lake of it,
this appeared to her as frivolity, indeed as unrighteous, and she
endeavored to reform me, to make me more aware of the value
of money, of the money that I had earned, and in some measure to
guide my expenditures. I do not mean to say that she ever made
tiresome reprimands or admonitions. Simple and innocent as her mind
was,--whenever she had resolved to bring pressure to bear upon my
indifference or my wilfulness, she pondered the possible method with
such affectionate patience that she did not fail to find a delicate or
a touchingly irresistible form. I once brought her a rare orchid, whose
fantastic form and brilliant colors I had so much admired in the shop
window that I was unwilling to allow any other human being to possess
it than Mariandel--by this name I called my friend. She did not say
anything so commonplace as that I ought not to have done it, or I ought
not to have spent so much money; she showed the honest joy of a child
who is proud to have received such a costly gift; but she added to her
praise of the flower, "It is sacred!"

The expression seemed to me somewhat pompous, as many of her
expressions were; nevertheless, I could not but nod assent, thinking of
the virgin forest in which this flower first gleamed forth through the
twilight, as a new miracle rising out of the ruins of innumerable
generations of trees. But Mariandel then continued, "It is a part of
your life."

I smiled in astonishment.

"Perhaps you have given for it the hardest and unhappiest of your days
of toil."

Such a thought as that did not come into her head on the spur of the
moment. I knew at once that she had excogitated it, and kept it in
reserve for a good opportunity of impressing upon my mind what my money
was. And then for days at a time I strove not to employ my money in
ways that ran counter to her honest feeling.

Neither in the city nor in the country did I know anything that
afforded me a pur