commissions. Come with me, only I must go first to my husband; he expects me by this train, and would be uneasy if he did not see me. Do you wish me to introduce him to you?"
"No, I am rather hurried."
"Just as you like, but he's a fine fellow, grateful to you for your advice to me. He had been accustomed to luxury; he loved me, and might have been weak; if we had remained in Paris who knows what follies we would have committed."
During this conversation we were still looking for the conveyance. She entered freely into the houses where I would never have thought of going; everywhere she was welcomed and well received; she knew all the peasant women, their fathers, their children.
"How are you, good mother? I've come to ask a favor of you."
"Anything to please you, dear Countess; sit down." And everybody rose to give her a seat.
As she sat and told my dilemma I was an interested observer of her. Any one would have mistaken her for a country-bred lady, brought up in the free and frank ways of the open-air life, friendly and superior at the same time. What a rapid, perfect and complete change! All she had on could not have cost more than thirty-five or forty francs, but how neat, how sweet, smelling of well-ordered shelves and drawers.
Everywhere the horses had been in use, and we found difficulty; not an animal could be budged before the morning. At last a butcher, in consideration of a good round sum, and to please my little Countess, would drive me on his cart, the one he used for delivery to the customers of the neighboring chateaux. Three leagues from Paris, this is what may happen any day. It was now eleven o'clock at night, the houses were all closed, the moon had risen, the night was fine, the black outlines of the trees seemed sketched on the pearly transparency of the horizon, the depths of the
