who made me join their games, and would offer me their cheeks to
kiss through the back of a chair, or invite me to blow out a candle
which they would lift suddenly above the range of my breath. But
until that moment no person of the fair sex had ever subjected me to
such a whimsical piece of familiarity as that of tickling my nose
with my own feather pen. Happily I remembered the maxim of my late
grandfather, who was accustomed to say that everything was permissible
on the part of ladies, and that whatever they do to us is to be
regarded as a grace and a favour. Therefore, as a grace and a favour
I received the nutshells and the titillations with my own pen, and
I tried to smile. Much more!--I even found speech.

"Madame," I said, with dignified politeness, "you accord the honour
of a visit not to a silly child, not to a boor, but to a bibliophile
who is very happy to make your acquaintance, and who knows that long
ago you used to make elf-knots in the manes of mares at the crib,
drink the milk from the skimming-pails, slip graines-a-gratter down
the backs of our great-grandmothers, make the hearth sputter in the
faces of the old folks, and, in short, fill the house with disorder
and gaiety. You can also boast of giving the nicest frights in the
world to lovers who stayed out in the woods too late of evenings.
But I thought you had vanished out of existence at least three
centuries ago. Can it really be, Madame, that you are still to be
seen in this age of railways and telegraphs? My concierge, who used
to be a nurse in her young days, does not know your story; and my
little boy-neighbour, whose nose is still wiped for him by his
bonne, declares that you do not exist."

"What do you yourself think about it?" she cried, in a silvery voice,
straightening up her royal little figure in a very haughty fashion,