better at the end of them, for love comes, like bread, from a perpetual rehandling.  And besides, I was fallen into a panic of fear.  How, if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my empty days? how was I to fall back and find my interest in the major’s lessons, the lieutenant’s chess, in a twopenny sale in the market, or a halfpenny addition to the prison fare?

Days went by, and weeks; I had not the courage to calculate, and to-day I have not the courage to remember; but at last she was there.  At last I saw her approach me in the company of a boy about her own age, and whom I divined at once to be her brother.

I rose and bowed in silence.

‘This is my brother, Mr. Ronald Gilchrist,’ said she.  ‘I have told him of your sufferings.  He is so sorry for you!’

‘It is more than I have the right to ask,’ I replied; ‘but among gentlefolk these generous sentiments are natural.  If your brother and I were to meet in the field, we should meet like tigers; but when he sees me here disarmed and helpless, he forgets his animosity.’  (At which, as I had ventured to expect, this beardless champion coloured to the ears for pleasure.)  ‘Ah, my dear young lady,’ I continued, ‘there are many of your countrymen languishing in my country, even as I do here.  I can but hope there is found some French lady to convey to each of them the priceless consolation of her sympathy.  You have given me alms; and more than alms—hope; and while you were absent I was not forgetful.  Suffer me to be able to tell myself that I have at least tried to make a return; and for the prisoner’s sake deign to accept this trifle.’

So saying, I offered her my lion, which she took, looked at in some embarrassment, and then, catching sight of the dedication, broke out with a cry.

‘Why, how did you know my name?’ she exclaimed.

‘When names are so appropriate, they should be easily guessed,’ said I, bowing.  ‘But indeed, there was no magic in the matter.  A lady called you by name on the day I found your handkerchief, and I was quick to remark and cherish it.’

‘It is very, very beautiful,’ said she, ‘and I shall be always proud of the inscription.—Come, Ronald, we must be going.’  She bowed to me as a lady bows to her equal, and passed on (I could have sworn) with a heightened colour.

I was overjoyed: my innocent ruse had succeeded; she had taken my gift without a hint of payment, and she would scarce sleep in peace till she had made it up to me.  No greenhorn in matters of the heart, I was besides aware that I had now a resident ambassador at the court of my lady.  The lion might be ill chiselled; it was mine.  My hands had made and held it; my knife—or, to speak more by the mark, my rusty nail—had traced those letters; and simple as the words were, they would keep repeating to her that I was grateful and that I found her fair.  The boy had looked like a gawky, and blushed at a compliment; I could see besides that he regarded me with considerable suspicion; yet he made so manly a figure of a lad, that I could not withhold from him my sympathy.  And as for the impulse that had made her bring and introduce him, I could not sufficiently admire it.  It seemed to me finer than wit, and more tender than a caress.  It said (plain as language), ‘I do not and I cannot know you.  Here is my brother—you can know him; this is the way to me—follow it.’

CHAPTER II—A TALE OF A PAIR OF SCISSORS

I was still plunged in these thoughts when the bell was rung that discharged our visitors into the street.  Our little market was no sooner closed than we were summoned to the distribution, and received our rations, which we were then allowed to eat according to fancy in any part of our quarters.

I have said the conduct of some of our visitors was unbearably offensive; it was possibly more so than they dreamed—as the sight-seers at a menagerie may offend in a thousand ways, and quite without meaning it, the noble and unfortunate animals behind the bars; and there is no doubt but some of my compatriots were susceptible beyond reason.  Some of these old whiskerandos, originally peasants, trained since boyhood in victorious armies, and accustomed to move among subject and trembling populations, could ill brook their change of circumstance.  There was one man of the name of Goguelat, a brute of the first water, who had enjoyed no touch of civilisation beyond the military discipline, and had risen by an extreme heroism of bravery to a grade for which he was otherwise unfitted—that of maréchal des logis in the 22nd of the line.  In so far as a brute can be a good soldier, he was a good soldier; the Cross was on his breast, and gallantly earned; but in all things outside his line of duty the man was no other than a brawling, bruising ignorant pillar of low pothouses.  As a gentleman by birth, and a scholar by taste and education, I was the type of all that he least understood and most detested; and the mere view of our visitors would leave him daily in a transport of annoyance, which he would make haste to wreak on the nearest victim, and too often on myself.

It was so now.  Our rations were scarce served out, and I had just withdrawn into a corner of the yard, when I perceived him drawing near.  He wore an air of hateful mirth; a set of young fools, among whom he passed for a wit, followed him with looks of expectation; and I saw I was about to be the object of some of his insufferable pleasantries.  He took a place beside me, spread out his rations, drank to me derisively from his measure of prison beer, and began.  What he said it would be impossible to print; but his admirers, who believed their wit to have surpassed himself, actually rolled among the gravel.  For my part, I thought at first I should have died.  I had not dreamed the wretch was so observant; but hate sharpens the ears, and he had counted our interviews and actually knew Flora by her name.  Gradually my coolness returned to me, accompanied by a volume of living anger that surprised myself.

‘Are you nearly done?’ I asked.  ‘Because if you are, I am about to say a word or two myself.’

‘Oh, fair play!’ said he.  ‘Turn about!  The Marquis of Carabas to the tribune.’

‘Very well,’ said I.  ‘I have to inform you that I am a gentleman.  You do not know what that means, hey?  Well, I will tell you.  It is a comical sort of animal; springs from another strange set of creatures they call ancestors; and, in common with toads and other vermin, has a thing that he calls feelings.  The lion is a gentleman; he will not touch carrion.  I am a gentleman, and I cannot bear to soil my fingers with such a lump of dirt.  Sit still, Philippe Goguelat! sit still and do not say a word, or I shall know you are a coward; the eyes of our guards are upon us.  Here is your health!’ said I, and pledged him in the prison beer.  ‘You have chosen to speak in a certain way of a young child,’ I continued, ‘who might be your daughter, and who was giving alms to me and some others of us mendicants.  If the Emperor’—saluting—‘if my Emperor could hear you, he would pluck off the Cross from your gross body.  I cannot do that; I cannot take away what His Majesty has given; but one thing I promise you—I promise you, Goguelat, you shall be dead to-night.’

I had borne so much from him in the past, I believe he thought there was no end to my forbearance, and he was at first amazed.  But I have the pleasure to think that some of my expressions had pierced through his thick hide; and besides, the brute was truly a hero of valour, and loved fighting for itself.  Whatever the cause, at least, he had soon pulled himself together, and took the thing (to do him justice) handsomely.

‘And I promise you, by the devil’s horns, that you shall have the chance!’ said he, and pledged me again; and again I did him scrupulous honour.

The news of this defiance spread from