Awhile I listened to the lullaby of bees humming in the berceau , and watched, through the glass door and the tender, lightly-strewn spring foliage, Madame Beck and a gay party of friends, whom she had entertained that day at dinner after morning mass, walking in the centre-alley under orchard boughs dressed at this season in blossom, and wearing a colouring as pure and warm as mountain-snow at sunrise.

My principal attraction towards this group of guests lay, I remember, in one figure⁠—that of a handsome young girl whom I had seen before as a visitor at Madame Beck’s, and of whom I had been vaguely told that she was a filleule , or goddaughter, of M. Emanuel’s, and that between her mother, or aunt, or some other female relation of hers, and the Professor, had existed of old a special friendship. M.