he went back to the garden where he had found his fair stranger, having
been very coolly dismissed by Madame Magnotte after his introduction had
been made.

And then M. Lenoble, being of a romantic turn of mind, remembered how a
lady had been found by a student sitting on the lowest steps of the
guillotine, desolate and helpless, at night; and how the student had
taken her home and sheltered her, and had straightway fallen desperately
in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had
been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours
before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal and
delusive.

Was this English stranger whom Gustave had found in the gardens of the
Luxembourg twin sister to that ghostly lady of the familiar legend? Her
despair and her beauty seemed to him greater than earthly sorrow or
earthly beauty; and he was half inclined to wonder whether she could be
of the same race as Madelon Frehlter. And from this hour the sense of a
weight upon his mind, before so vague and intermittent, became an
enduring oppression, not to be shaken off by any effort of his will.

All through that day he found himself thinking more of the unknown
Englishwoman than was consistent with a strict performance of his duties.
He was vexed with himself on account of this foolish distraction of mind.

"What a frivolous fellow I must be," he said to himself, "to dwell upon
such a trifle! This comes of leading such a monotonous life."

At dinner he looked for the lady; but she did not appear at the long
table, where the shrill old ladies, the epicurean old bachelors, the