air is fragrant with the odor of fruit and foliage; and it was through
this scented air, and amid these beautiful flowers, that these two
little girls were wandering idly, picking here and there to add to their
big bouquets, that August day so many years ago.

Every now and then the little girls would stop their flower-picking to
cool off; for, though the August sun was hot, the western breezes came
fresh across the wide Gulf of Ajaccio, down to whose shores ran broad
and beautiful avenues of chestnut-trees, through which one could catch a
glimpse, like a beautiful picture, of the little island of Sanguinarie,
three miles away from shore.

As they came out from the shadow of the chestnut-trees, one of the
little girls suddenly caught her companion's arm, and, pointing at an
opening in a pile of rocks that overlooked the sea, she said,--

"Oh, what is this, Eliza?--an oven?"

"An oven, silly! Why, what do you mean?" Eliza answered. "Who would
build an oven here, tell me?"

"But it opens like an oven," her friend declared. "See, it has a great
mouth, as if to swallow one. Perhaps some of the black elves live there,
that Nurse Camilla told us of. Do you think so, Eliza?"

"What a baby you are, Panoria!" Eliza replied, with the superior air of
one who knows all about things. "That is no oven; nor is it a black
elf's house. It is Napoleon's grotto."

"Napoleon's!" cried Panoria. "And who gave it to him, then? Your great