e that, day after day,
struck its roots deeper and farther into my very soul, never thence to
be torn up here or hereafter.

CHAPTER XLIII.

ON A WINTER'S EVENING.

After a more than usually severe winter, the early spring came, crowned
with rime instead of primroses. Paris was intensely cold. In March the
Seine was still frozen, and snow lay thickly on the house-tops. Quiet at
all times, the little nook in which I lived became monastically still,
and at night, when the great gates were closed, and the footsteps of the
passers-by fell noiselessly upon the trodden snow, you might have heard
a whisper from one side of the street to the other. There was to me
something indescribably delightful about this silent solitude in the
heart of a great city.

Sitting beside the fire one evening, enjoying the profound calm of the
place, attending from time to time to my little coffee-pot on the hob,
and slowly turning the pages of a favorite author, I luxuriate in a
state of mind half idle, half studious. Leaving off presently to listen
to some sound which I hear, or fancy I hear, in the adjoining room, I
wonder for the twentieth time whether Hortense has yet returned from her
long day's teaching; and so rise--open my window--and look out. Yes; the
light from her reading-lamp streams out at last across the snow-laden
balcony. Heigho! it is something even to know that she is there so near
me--divided only by a thin partition!

Trying to comfort myself with this thought, I close the window again and
return to my book, more restless and absent than before. Sitting thus,
with the unturned leaf lingering between my thumb and forefinger, I hear
a rapid footfall on the stairs, and a musical whistle which, growing
louder as it draws nearer, breaks off at my door, and is followed by a
prolonged assault and battery of the outer panels.

"Welcome, noisiest of visitors!" I exclaim, knowing it to be Mueller
before I even open the door. "You are quite a stranger. You have not
been near me for a fortnight."

"It will not be your fault, Signor Book-worm, if I don't become a
stranger _au pied de la lettre_" replies he, cheerily. "Why, man, it is
close upon three weeks since you have crossed the threshold of my door.
The Quartier Latin is aggrieved by your neglect, and the fine arts
t'other side of the water languish and are forlorn."

So saying, he shakes the snow from his coat like a St. Bernard mastiff,
perches his cap on the head of