accompanied by a woman and a little girl, was standing for a long time
in front of the palace of the Tuileries, near the ruins of a house
recently pulled down, at the point where in our day the wing begins
which was intended to unite the chateau of Catherine de Medici with
the Louvre of the Valois.

The man stood there with folded arms and a bowed head, which he
sometimes raised to look alternately at the consular palace and at his
wife, who was sitting near him on a stone. Though the woman seemed
wholly occupied with the little girl of nine or ten years of age,
whose long black hair she amused herself by handling, she lost not a
single glance of those her companion cast on her. Some sentiment other
than love united these two beings, and inspired with mutual anxiety
their movements and their thoughts. Misery is, perhaps, the most
powerful of all ties.

The stranger had one of those broad, serious heads, covered with thick
hair, which we see so frequently in the pictures of the Caracci. The
jet black of the hair was streaked with white. Though noble and proud,
his features had a hardness which spoiled them. In spite of his
evident strength, and his straight, erect figure, he looked to be over
sixty years of age. His dilapidated clothes were those of a foreign
country. Though the faded and once beautiful face of the wife betrayed
the deepest sadness, she forced herself to smile, assuming a calm
countenance whenever her husband looked at her.

The little girl was standing, though signs of weariness were on the
youthful face, which was tanned by the sun. She had an Italian cast of
countenance and bearing, large black eyes beneath their well arched
brows, a native nobleness, and candid grace. More than one of those