hearing it; and all I could remember when awake were the words
"triste--comment--sale." The air, which I knew so well in my dream, I
could not recall.

It seemed as though some innermost core of my being, some childish holy
of holies, secreted a source of supersubtle reminiscence, which, under
some stimulus that now and again became active during sleep, exhaled
itself in this singular dream--shadowy and slight, but invariably
accompanied by a sense of felicity so measureless and so penetrating
that I would always wake in a mystic flutter of ecstasy, the bare
remembrance of which was enough to bless and make happy many a
succeeding hour.

* * * * *

Besides this happy family of three, close by (in the Street of the
Tower) lived my grandmother Mrs. Biddulph, and my Aunt Plunket, a widow,
with her two sons, Alfred and Charlie, and her daughter Madge. They also
were fair to look at--extremely so--of the gold-haired, white-skinned,
well-grown Anglo-Saxon type, with frank, open, jolly manners, and no
beastly British pride.

So that physically, at least, we reflected much credit on the English
name, which was not in good odor just then at Passy-les-Paris, where
Waterloo was unforgotten. In time, however, our nationality was condoned
on account of our good looks--"non Angli sed angeli!" as M. Saindou was
gallantly pleased to exclaim when he called (with a prospectus of his
school) and found us all gathered together under the big apple-tree
on our lawn.