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lf universally agreeable and trusting for a partner to his own unassisted efforts. For myself, I was indebted to Monsieur Gustave for an introduction to a very charming young lady whose name was Josephine, and with whom I fell over head and ears in love without a moment's warning. She was somewhat under the middle height, slender, supple, rosy-lipped, and coquettish to distraction. Her pretty mouth dimpled round with smiles at every word it uttered. Her very eyes laughed. Her hair, which was more adorned than concealed by a tiny muslin cap that clung by some unseen agency to the back of her head, was of a soft, warm, wavy brown, with a woof of gold threading it here and there. Her voice was perhaps a little loud; her conversation rather childish; her accent such as would scarcely have passed current in the Faubourg St. Germain--but what of that? One would be worse than foolish to expect style and cultivation in a grisette; and had I not had enough to disgust me with both in Madame de Marignan? What more charming, after all, than youth, beauty, and lightheartedness? Were Noel and Chapsal of any importance to a mouth that could not speak without such a smile as Hebe might have envied? I was, at all events, in no mood to take exception to these little defects. I am not sure that I did not even regard them in the light of additional attractions. That which in another I should have called _bete_, I set down to the score of _naivete_ in Mademoiselle Josephine. One is not diffident at twenty--by the way, I was now twenty-one--especially after dining at the Maison Doree. Mademoiselle Josephine was frankness itself. Before I had enjoyed the pleasure of her acquaintance for ten minutes, she told me she was an artificial florist; that her _patronne_ lived in the Rue Menilmontant; that she went to her work every morning at nine, and left it every evening at eight; that she lodged _sous les toits_ at No. 70, Rue Aubry-le-Boucher; that her relations lived at Juvisy; and that she went to see them now and then on Sundays, when the weather and her funds permitted. "Is the country pretty at Juvisy, Mademoiselle?" I asked, by way of keeping up the conversation. "Oh, M'sieur, it is a real paradise. There are trees and fields, and there is the Seine close by, and a chateau, and a park, and a church on a hill, ... _ma foi!_ there is nothing in Paris half so pretty; not even the Jardin des Plantes!" "And have you been there latel
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