three chins had just been shaved. Standing on tiptoe, in the farthest
corner of their loft, to enjoy their victim's rage, the lads ceased
laughing on seeing the haughty indifference with which the young man
shook his cloak, and the intense contempt expressed by his face as he
glanced up at the empty window-frame.

At this moment a slender white hand threw up the lower half of one of
the clumsy windows on the third floor by the aid of the sash runners,
of which the pulley so often suddenly gives way and releases the heavy
panes it ought to hold up. The watcher was then rewarded for his long
waiting. The face of a young girl appeared, as fresh as one of the
white cups that bloom on the bosom of the waters, crowned by a frill
of tumbled muslin, which gave her head a look of exquisite innocence.
Though wrapped in brown stuff, her neck and shoulders gleamed here and
there through little openings left by her movements in sleep. No
expression of embarrassment detracted from the candor of her face, or
the calm look of eyes immortalized long since in the sublime works of
Raphael; here were the same grace, the same repose as in those
Virgins, and now proverbial. There was a delightful contrast between
the cheeks of that face on which sleep had, as it were, given high
relief to a superabundance of life, and the antiquity of the heavy
window with its clumsy shape and black sill. Like those day-blowing
flowers, which in the early morning have not yet unfurled their cups,
twisted by the chills of night, the girl, as yet hardly awake, let her
blue eyes wander beyond the neighboring roofs to look at the sky;
then, from habit, she cast them down on the gloomy depths of the
street, where they immediately met those of her adorer. Vanity, no
doubt, distressed her at being seen in undress; she started back, the
worn pulley gave way, and the sash fell with the rapid run, which in
our day has earned for this artless invention of our forefathers an