If we have dwelt with disproportionate detail on the above
little incident, we must be forgiven in consideration of its
real importance to our Madeleine, marking, as it did, the
commencement of a new era in her life. The sudden inspiration
that had kindled for a moment in the great church died away,
indeed, as newer impressions more imperatively claimed her
attention; but the memory of it remained as a starting point
to which any similar sensations subsequently recurring might
be referred, as a phenomenon which seemed to contain within
itself the germ and possible explanation of a thousand vague
aspirations, yearnings which began about this time to spring
up in her mind, and which almost unconsciously linked
themselves with that solemn hour the remembrance of which,
after her conversation with her father, she had set apart in
her own heart, to be pondered on from time to time, but in
silence,--a reticence too natural and legitimate not to be
followed by a hundred others of a similar kind.

M. Linders, for reasons of his own, with which we need not
concern ourselves here, spent the following autumn and winter
in Florence, establishing himself in an apartment for the
season, contrary to his usual practice of living in hotels;
and this was how it happened that Madelon made two friends who
introduced quite a new element into her life, one which, under
other circumstances, might hardly have entered into it as a
principle of education at all. The rooms M. Linders had taken
were on the third floor of a large palazzo with many
occupants, where a hundred feet daily passed up and down the