"Then every day it shall be; and--let me see--you shall improve my bad
German, and I will teach you French."

I could have clapped my hands for joy. I was longing to learn French, and I
knew how much it would also please my father; so I thanked Monsieur Maurice
again and again, and ran home with a light heart to tell of all the wonders
I had seen.




4


From this time forth, I saw him always once, and sometimes twice a day--in
the afternoons, when he regularly gave me the promised French lesson; and
occasionally in the mornings, provided the weather was neither too cold nor
too damp for him to join me in the grounds. For Monsieur Maurice was not
strong. He could not with impunity face snow, and rain, and our keen
Rhenish north-east winds; and it was only when the wintry sun shone out at
noon and the air came tempered from the south, that he dared venture from
his own fire-side. When, however, there shone a sunny day, with what
delight I used to summon him for a walk, take him to my favourite points of
view, and show him the woodland nooks that had been my chosen haunts in
summer! Then, too, the unwonted colour would come back to his pale cheek,
and the smile to his lips, and while the ramble and the sunshine lasted he
would be all jest and gaiety, pelting me with dead leaves, chasing me in
and out of the plantations, and telling me strange stories, half pathetic,
half grotesque, of Dryads, and Fauns, and Satyrs--of Bacchus, and Pan, and
Polyphemus--of nymphs who became trees, and shepherds who were transformed