their leaded panes. Sometimes the reflection of the red damask
window-curtains added to the effect of that head, already so highly
colored; like a crimson flower she glowed in the aerial garden so
carefully trained upon her window-sill.

The quaint old house possessed therefore something more quaint than
itself,--the portrait of a young girl worthy of Mieris, or Van Ostade,
or Terburg, or Gerard Douw, framed in one of those old, defaced, half
ruined windows the brushes of the old Dutch painters loved so well.
When some stranger, surprised or interested by the building, stopped
before it and gazed at the second story, old Sauviat would poke his
head beyond the overhanging projection, certain that he should see his
daughter at her window. Then he would retreat into the shop rubbing
his hands and saying to his wife in the Auvergne vernacular:--

"Hey! old woman; they're admiring your daughter!"

In 1820 an incident occurred in the simple uneventful life the girl
was leading, which might have had no importance in the life of any
other young woman, but which, in point of fact, did no doubt exercise
over Veronique's future a terrible influence.

On one of the suppressed church fete-days, when many persons went
about their daily labor, though the Sauviats scrupulously closed their
shop, attended mass, and took a walk, Veronique passed, on their way
to the fields, a bookseller's stall on which lay a copy of "Paul and
Virginia." She had a fancy to buy it for the sake of the engraving,
and her father paid a hundred sous for the fatal volume, which he put
into the pocket of his coat.