than any of the others except the Duc de Bourbon. Alas! ‘tis a sad thing to think that all that has existed and exists no longer!”

The two lovers were not listening to the venerable dowager. Phoebus had returned and was leaning on the back of his betrothed’s chair, a charming post whence his libertine glance plunged into all the openings of Fleur-de-Lys’s gorget. This gorget gaped so conveniently, and allowed him to see so many exquisite things and to divine so many more, that Phoebus, dazzled by this skin with its gleams of satin, said to himself, “How can any one love anything but a fair skin?”

Both were silent.

The young girl raised sweet, enraptured eyes to him from time to time, and their hair mingled in a ray of spring sunshine.