about hares. He knows their habits. He said to me it was a pleasure to
look at them dancing in the moonlight on the plains. He assured me that
they were very intelligent, and that he had seen an old hare, pursued by
dogs, force another hare to get out of the trail so as to deceive the
hunters. Darling, did Monsieur Le Menil ever talk to you about hares?"

Therese replied she did not know, and that she thought hunters were
tiresome.

Miss Bell exclaimed. She did not think M. Le Menil was ever tiresome
when talking of the hares that danced in the moonlight on the plains and
among the vines. She would like to raise a hare, like Phanion.

"Darling, you do not know Phanion. Oh, I am sure that Monsieur Dechartre
knows her. She was beautiful, and dear to poets. She lived in the
Island of Cos, beside a dell which, covered with lemon-trees, descended
to the blue sea. And they say that she looked at the blue waves.
I related Phanion's history to Monsieur Le Menil, and he was very glad to
hear it. She had received from some hunter a little hare with long ears.
She held it on her knees and fed it on spring flowers. It loved Phanion
and forgot its mother. It died before having eaten too many flowers.
Phanion lamented over its loss. She buried it in the lemon-grove, in a
grave which she could see from her bed. And the shade of the little hare
was consoled by the songs of the poets."

The good Madame Marmet said that M. Le Menil pleased by his elegant and
discreet manners, which young men no longer practise. She would have
liked to see him. She wanted him to do something for her.

"Or, rather, for my nephew," she said. "He is a captain in the