entertained, but applied to a man it signifies the giver of the feast
who is niggardly.

Madame Schontz had too much sense and she knew men too well not to
conceive great hopes from such a beginning. Monsieur de Rochefide
allowed her five hundred francs a month, furnished for her, rather
shabbily, an apartment costing twelve hundred francs a year on a
second floor in the rue Coquenard, and set himself to study Aurelie's
character, while she, perceiving his object, gave him a character to
study. Consequently, Rochefide became happy in meeting with a woman of
noble nature. But he saw nothing surprising in that; her mother was a
Barnheim of Baden, a well-bred woman. Besides, Aurelie was so well
brought up herself! Speaking English, German, and Italian, she
possessed a thorough knowledge of foreign literatures. She could hold
her own against all second-class pianists. And, remark this! she
behaved about her talents like a well-bred woman; she never mentioned
them. She picked up a brush in a painter's studio, used it half
jestingly, and produced a head which caused general astonishment. For
mere amusement during the time she pined as under-mistress at
Saint-Denis, she had made some advance in the domain of the sciences,
but her subsequent life had covered these good seeds with a coating of
salt, and she now gave Arthur the credit of the sprouting of the
precious germs, re-cultivated for him.

Thus Aurelie began by showing a disinterestedness equal to her other
charms, which allowed this weak corvette to attach its grapnels
securely to the larger vessel. Nevertheless, about the end of the
first year, she made ignoble noises in the antechamber with her clogs,
coming in about the time when the marquis was awaiting her, and
hiding, as best she could, the draggled tail of an outrageously muddy