the third day; she would be delighted with the charming welcome with
which the beauties of the Court, the Duchesses de Chaulieu, de
Maufrigneuse, de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu, and other ladies, were prepared
to meet her. It was in fact an excessively amusing little warfare,
with its marches and countermarches and stratagems,--all of which were
keenly enjoyed by the Dumays, the Latournelles, Gobenheim, and
Butscha, who, in conclave assembled, said horrible things of these
noble personages, cruelly noting and intelligently studying all their
little meannesses.

The promises on the d'Herouville side were, however, confirmed by the
arrival of an invitation, couched in flattering terms, from the Duc de
Verneuil and the Master of the Hunt to Monsieur le Comte de La Bastie
and his daughter, to stay at Rosembray and be present at a grand hunt
on the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, of November following.

La Briere, full of dark presentiments, craved the presence of Modeste
with an eagerness whose bitter joys are known only to lovers who feel
that they are parted, and parted fatally from those they love. Flashes
of joy came to him intermingled with melancholy meditations on the one
theme, "I have lost her," and made him all the more interesting to
those who watched him, because his face and his whole person were in
keeping with his profound feeling. There is nothing more poetic than a
living elegy, animated by a pair of eyes, walking about, and sighing
without rhymes.

The Duc d'Herouville arrived at last to arrange for Modeste's
departure; after crossing the Seine she was to be conveyed in the
duke's caleche, accompanied by the Demoiselles d'Herouville. The duke
was charmingly courteous, he begged Canalis and La Briere to be of the