tout court. Madame du Verger had hinted
that "votre toujours reconnaissante Valérie,"
would be a slightly graceful acknowledgment
of the kindness of the person who was paying
for her education, but Mademoiselle Sablon very
scornfully replied, "I shall do what I like, and
I am not his Valérie."

She left Lyons when she was on the verge of
eighteen. This was in 1828. Constant was
fearful of her coming back to Marouille yet
awhile. He wished her to return only once, as
his wife, to astound those who had known her
in her poverty and her degradation, and then
quit the place for ever. His plan was, that she
should enter a school in Paris or in England for
another year or fifteen months— not as a pupil,
but as a boarder— and that she should then make
him happy. He unfolded this scheme to her, in
the parlour of the school, on the day when he
went to fetch her away. He avowed his love,
and said, with a smile, that it was pure and
honourable.

The girl laughed at him. "What a fairy tale!"
she cried. "Beauty and the Beast over again!
Yes, monsieur, I am Beauty, and you are the
Beast, with your sleepy eyes, and your great
black head like a primeval forest. Ah! you
thought a pretty grape-vine was growing up for
you. Ah! you thought you had but to shake
the tree, and the pear would fall into your
mouth!"

"Valérie," the innkeeper humbly expostulated,
"I implore you not to speak in that mocking
spirit. Think of my devotion, of my love."

"I know nothing about it," sneered Valérie.
"What should I, a school-girl of eighteen, know
about devotion! Love was not taught in this
school. It was forbidden."

Again, and with the eloquence which sincerity
alone can give, and gives, too, to the most tongue-tied
man, he pressed his suit.

"Don't be absurd," was Valérie's reply. "You
will bore me. I know nothing of life yet. I
have only seen one stupid provincial town. I
am tired of schools, whether as pupil or boarder.
I have had enough of books, and want to see the
world. I must be free and independent. I don't
want to tie myself for life to a stupid old man
with a head like a grisly bear. Do you wish to
ruin my career?"

"Your career," repeated Constant, in sorrowful
surprise. "Valérie, what would your career
have been but for me? Ah! do not be
ungrateful."

"Do not exaggerate your claims to my gratitude.
It appears you had your own purpose to
serve, in educating me. You merely picked up
what had been abandoned. The next passer-by
might have done the same, and not have been a
village publican. Men are not so blind as you
take them to be. Somebody would have been
sure to have discovered the pearl on the dung-
hill, sooner or later."

So she reasoned with the pitiless logic of an
ungrateful heart. There was no moving or
softening her. ln a moment of justifiable irritation
Constant threatened to withdraw his
protection. She coolly answered, as before, that
her character was unimpeached; that the mayor
of her native place was bound by law to give
her a passport and a livret; and that she
would have no difficulty in obtaining employment
as a servant in town or country.
Constant knew that in this matter she had right on
her side, and that he could gain nothing by
breaking with her. He thought that to lose
her would be death or madness to him. He
suggested a negotiation, a compromise. Valérie
was willing to negotiate— in the spirit and
on the same basis recently proposed by his
Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, when
the great Powers remonstrated with him on his
flagrant violations of the treaties of 1815, and
his atrocious treatment of the Poles. The
autocrat, if I remember right (for I am no
politician), expressed his benevolent willingness
to " show clemency" to the Poles, " after the
insurrectionary bands had been dispersed." So
Valérie argued. "Grovel in the dust at my
feet," she implied. " Abandon all your pretensions,
and then I may extend some 'clemency'
to you." The negotiation was concluded in
this wise: When J. B. Constant had told the
Marouillais that Valérie was to be placed under
the protection of a married sister who kept an
hotel in Lyons, he had told a lie— but a white
one. There were extenuating circumstances in
his fraud. He really had a sister, and a married
sister, who kept an hotel— but she lived in Paris,
and not in Lyons. She should go to Paris, and
live a year with this sister, Madame Hummelhausen,
wife of a German, formerly of the profession
of bootmaking, but now principally of certain
sixth-rate estaminets on the Boulevards, where
he smoked, drank beer, and played endless parties
of dominoes, while his wife worked hard at home.
She would go to Madame Hummelhausen, but a
wardrobe suitable to the position of a young
lady brought up in affluence was to be provided
for her, and she was to be completely her own
mistress. A strange treaty, of a verity! Where
one of the contracting parties had all, and the
other nothing, and where the pauper dictated
terms to the capitalist! And yet such
treaties are registered by the bundle in Love's
chancery. Constant signed all the protocols,
as, in this issue he would have signed away his
last crust, his liberty, his life. There was no
need for Valérie to return yet awhile to
Marouille. She was not so very anxious to see
her aunt again. There are handsome and
well-stocked shops in Lyons, and the expenditure of
some fifteen hundred francs soon furnished
Mademoiselle Valérie Sablon with the articles of
wearing apparel she required for the moment.
"When I want more dresses," she said to her
slave, calmly, " I will write, and you will open
a credit for me with Madame what do you call
her— Hummelhausen— quel nom de Visigoth!
As for jewellery, there will be time enough to think