e cavalier."

I was just about to avow that I had no horse, when I remembered that I
could borrow Dalrymple's, or hire one, if necessary; so I checked
myself, and bowed.

"When I go to an exhibition," said Madame de Marignan, "it will be your
business to look out the pictures in the catalogue--when I walk, you
will carry my parasol--when I go into a shop, you will take care of my
dog--when I embroider, you will wind off my silks, and look for my
scissors--when I want amusement, you must make me laugh--and when I am
sleepy, you must read to me. In short, my _cavaliere servente_ must be
my shadow."

"Then, like your shadow, Madame," said I, "his place is ever at your
feet, and that is all I desire!"

Madame de Marignan laughed outright, and showed the loveliest little
double row of pearls in all the world.

"Admirable!" said she. "Quite an elegant compliment, and worthy of an
accomplished lady-killer! _Allons_! you are a promising scholar."

"In all that I have dared to say, Madame, I am, at least, sincere," I
added, abashed by the kind of praise.

"Sincere? Of course you are sincere. Who ever doubted it? Nay, to blush
like that is enough to spoil the finest compliment in the world.
There--it is three o'clock, and at half-past I have an engagement, for
which I must now make my _toilette_. Come to-morrow evening to my box at
the _Italiens_, and so adieu. Stay--being my _cavaliere_, I permit you,
at parting, to kiss my hand."

Trembling, breathless, scarcely daring to touch it with mine, I lifted
the soft little hand to my lips, stammered something which was, no
doubt, sufficiently foolish, and hurried away, as if I were treading on
air and breathing sunshine.

All the rest of that day went by in a kind of agreeable delirium. I
walked about, almost without knowledge where I went. I talked, without
exactly knowing what I said. I have some recollection of marching to and
fro among the side-alleys of the Bois de Boulogne, which at that time
was really a woody park, and not a pleasure-garden--of lying under a
tree, and listening to the birds overhead, and indulging myself in some
idiotic romance about love, and solitude, and Madame de Marignan--of
wandering into a _restaurant_ somewhere about seven o'clock, and sitting
down to a dinner for which I had no appetite--of going back, sometime
during the evening, to the Rue Castellane, and walking to and fro on the
opposite side of the way, looking up for ever so long at t