mple. Good-night."

"Good-night," I replied, reluctantly; but almost before I had said it,
she was gone.

After this, as the winter wore away, and spring drew on, Hortense's
balcony became once more a garden, and she used to attend to her flowers
every evening. She always found me on my balcony when she came out, and
soon our open-air meetings became such an established fact that, instead
of parting with "good-night," we said "_au revoir_--till to-morrow." At
these times we talked of many things; sometimes of subjects abstract and
mystical--of futurity, of death, of the spiritual life--but oftenest of
Art in its manifold developments. And sometimes our speculations
wandered on into the late hours of the night.

And yet, for all our talking and all our community of tastes, we became
not one jot more intimate. I still loved in silence--she still lived in
a world apart.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THERMOPYLAE.

How dreary 'tis for women to sit still
On winter nights by solitary fires,
And hear the nations praising them far off.

AURORA LEIGH.

Abolished by the National Convention of 1793, re-established in 1795,
reformed by the first Napoleon in 1803, and remodelled in 1816 on the
restoration of the Bourbons, the Academie Francaise, despite its changes
of fortune, name, and government, is a liberal and splendid institution.
It consists of forty members, whose office it is to compile the great
dictionary, and to enrich, purify, and preserve the language. It assists
authors in distress. It awards prizes for poetry, eloquence, and virtue;
and it bestows those honors with a noble impartiality that observes no
distinction of sex, rank, or party. To fill one of the forty fauteuils
of the Academie Francaise is the darling ambition of every eminent
Frenchman of letters. There the poet, the philosopher, the historian,
the man of science, sit side by side, and meet on equal ground. When a
seat falls vacant, when a prize is to be awarded, when an anniversary is
to be celebrated, the interest and excitement become intense. To the
political, the fashionable, or the commercial world, these events are
perhaps of little moment. They affect neither the Bourse nor the Budget.
They exercise no perceptible influence on the Longchamps toilettes. But
to the striving author, to the rising orator, to all earnest workers in
the broad fields of literature, they are serious and significant
circumstances.

Living out of socie