II.

One bright morning in the summer of 1756 the loungers under the chestnuts which then adorned the garden of the Palais Royal—that forehanded and long-headed (though, long as his head was, he could not keep it long) personage, Philippe Égalité, thought shops would be more ornamental as well as more useful, so he put the chestnuts in his pocket and built that splendid colonnade which is the wonder and delight of the wandering American—the loungers in the shade of the Palais Royal chestnuts were conscious of a new sensation. Not that sensations were just then going begging. By no means. One or two royal gentlemen, by laying their crowned heads together, had already contrived that famous misunderstanding which was to turn a large part of three continents into a shambles for the next seven years; to cost the “well-beloved,” in Canada and India, the brightest jewels of his crown, and to make of Montcalm, for losing one and his life with it, a hero, and of Lally-Tollendal, for having the bad taste to survive the loss of the other, a traitor or a martyr as you were for him or against him. So often is it that for precisely the same services a grateful and discriminating country decrees to one of her sons a monument, to another a halter. Perhaps there is not so much difference between the two—to the dead men, at least—as some folks imagine.

But the heroes we are to deal with are by no means of the stuff of martyrs, and fighting, beyond an ornamental pass or two in the Bois de Boulogne, they vote vulgar and _bourgeois_. Here under the chestnut blossoms is a sensation much more to their taste. It is a new flower-girl. But what a flower-girl! Figure to yourself, then, Mme. la Duchesse, a flower-girl arrayed in silks and laces and jewels a marchioness would give her head for (marchionesses’ heads were rated higher then than they came to be before the century was over), with a golden shell for her flower-basket, lined with blue satin and suspended by an embroidered scarf from the daintiest waist in the world—a flower-girl with the face of a seraph and the figure of a sylph, with eyes of liquid light and hair of woven sunshine, with the foot of Cinderella and a hand—a hand only less perfect than that of Madame, which your humble servant most respectfully salutes.

News so important must be sent post-haste to Versailles. A score of noblemen sprang to the saddle and rushed to lay their hearts and their diamonds at the feet of this strange paragon. But Nanette, young as she was, could tell base metal from good. The jewels she took from her adorers with smiling impartiality; the other sort of trinkets—sadly battered by use, it must be confessed, and not worth much at any time—she rejected with equally smiling disdain. Always gracious, gay, and self-possessed, sparkling with raillery and wit, she yet maintained a maidenly reserve that abashed the boldest license, and her reputation grew even faster than her fortune.

And the latter grew apace. She became the rage. Her appearance on the Palais Royal, followed at a little distance by footmen in livery and her maid, gathered about her straightway all the gallants and wits in Paris. Her basket was emptied in a trice, and emptied again as often as refilled by her servants. It was deemed an honor to receive a nosegay from her pretty fingers, and more louis than half-franc pieces repaid them.

Great ladies came to her _levées_—for such they really were—and even deigned to accept from the beautiful flower-girl the gift of a rose or a violet—gifts always sure to be recompensed in noble fashion with jewels or costly laces, rich silks or pieces of plate. Within two years Nanette had thus accumulated in houses, lands, and rents an annual income of forty thousand francs, besides loading her kindred with presents.

Naturally, this circumstance did not cool the ardor of the followers whom her beauty had attracted. One of these was particularly noticeable for his assiduity. He was a young man about twenty-two years old, of distinguished air and handsome features, tinged with that shadow of melancholy thought to be so irresistible to the feminine imagination. His clothes, too, were in his favor; for though irreproachably neat and faultlessly cut, they had plainly seen their best days. We all know what a sly rogue Pity is, and how untiringly he panders for a certain nameless kinsman. Every afternoon found the melancholy young man at the garden awaiting the flower-girl’s coming. On her arrival he would advance, select a flower, pay a dozen sous, exchange a word, perhaps, and disappear till the following day. Once he was absent, and the fair florist’s brow was clouded. In other words, Nanette was extremely cross, and many an unlucky _petit-maître_ was that day unmercifully snubbed for presuming on previous condescension. The garden trembled and was immersed in gloom. But presently the laggard made his appearance, Nanette’s lovely face was again wreathed in smiles, the garden breathed freely once more, and the _petit-maîtres_ were astonished to find their vapid pleasantries received more graciously than ever. From this remarkable circumstance the sagacious reader will doubtless form his own conclusion; and we do not say that the sagacious reader will be wrong.

In point of fact, we may as well admit at once that Nanette, without knowing it, was already in love with this handsome, melancholy stranger, of whom she knew nothing, except that he was noble, since he wore a sword. She would have given half she was worth to know even his name, but she dared not ask it. As often as the question trembled on her tongue she felt herself blushing violently and unable, for the life of her, to open her lips. Her modesty had not been educated away by a season in the civilizing atmosphere of the court.

Chance at last befriended her. One evening the brilliant Marquis de Louvois, after talking awhile with the unknown, came up to the Count de la Châtre, who was seated beside her, and said to him:

“This ass of a De Courtenaye puts me out of all patience. The king has asked why he does not come to Versailles. I repeat to him his majesty’s flattering question. Well! it goes in one ear and out the other. Can one so bury one’s self in Paris?”

Think of that, good Americans, before you die! In the year of grace 1756 Paris was only a burying place for Versailles! So that 1870 had a precedent.

“What else is he to do?” asks the count. “It takes money to live as we do, and his father, poor fellow, left him nothing but a name, which, although one of the first in France, is rather a drawback than otherwise, since it won’t permit him even to marry for money anything less than a princess; and rich princesses like to get as well as to give.”

“True, true,” murmurs the compassionate marquis. “I had forgotten. More’s the pity; such a good-looking fellow as he is—”

“And a connection of the royal family.”

“Faith, the king is not over and above kind to his cousins.” And the gentlemen dismiss the royal poor relation from their noble minds as they would brush a grain of snuff from their ruffles, and stroll off, humming an aria from the latest opera of the famous Favart, the little Offenbach of his little day. Forgotten art thou now, O famous Favart! and thy immortal airs are as dead as Julius Cæsar.

But not so easily did M. de Courtenaye’s tribulations pass from the mind of Nanette, who had lost not a word of this conversation. She thought of him all through a wakeful night; she was still thinking of him the next morning—having arisen for that fond purpose long before the household was stirring—when she was startled by feeling a kiss upon her arm. She sprang up with a little cry of anger and alarm; but her frown changed to a smile when she recognized the offender. It was Marcel, the handsome Marcel, her favorite brother, a year her senior, but so like her they were often mistaken for twins.

“O Marcel!” she cried, “how you frightened me. How was one to look for such gallantry from one’s brother?”

“But if one is the brother of Nanette?” says Marcel still more gallantly.

Marcel has been in good company and flatters himself he has quite the _bel air_. As an apprentice to M. Panckoucke to learn the bookseller’s trade, wherein his sister, when he got old enough, was to set him up for himself, he had many opportunities of seeing and hearing the wits of the capital, not without profit to mind and manners. Indeed, he fairly considered himself one of them already.

“Yes, my dear little sister,” he added with a patronizing air, “you are positively the talk of the town. Go where I will—and you know I go into the best circles,” he says pompously, adjusting his ruffles as he has seen the dandies do—“I hear of nothing but the beautiful, the witty Nanette. Why, it was only the other day I was at M. de Marmontel’s”—the ingenuous youth did not deem it essential to state that he had been sent in the honorable though humble capacity of “printer’s devil” with a bundle of proofs for correction (the proofs, indeed, of the _Contes Moraux_: the dullest, surely—always excepting the delightful, interminable romances of the incomparable Mlle. de Scudéry—ever penned in the tongue of Montaigne and Molière,) but his sister understood his harmless vanity and did not so much as smile—“at M. de Marmontel’s with the Duke de Nivernais, the Count de Lauraguais, M. de Voltaire, and the Prince de Courtenaye.”

Nanette started slightly, but her brother did not perceive it. It is the way of brothers, and this brother, besides, was for the moment rapt in contemplation of the greatness reflected upon him by association with these great names. He fairly grew an inch in stature as he rolled them out, dwelling fondly on the titles. It is something to have a king speak to you, if only to ask you to get out of the way. Marcel continued:

“The talk was all of you. M. de Lauraguais, not knowing me to be your near relation, presumed to deny your wit and to question your virtue.”

Nanette’s beautiful eyes flashed in a way that would have made the slanderer uncomfortable had he seen it.

“Insolent!” she murmured, clenching her little fists.

“You may imagine how my blood boiled,” went on Marcel. “I was on the point of doing something rash when M. de Courtenaye took up the cudgels in your behalf. 'M. de Lauraguais,’ he said with grave severity, 'is it possible that you, a gentleman, can give currency to the lies set afloat by baffled libertines or malicious fools against the reputation of a defenceless girl? My life upon it, Nanette is as pure as she is lovely; and were proof of her innocence needed, I should ask none better than these stories of lovers whom no one has seen, or can even name. Why, had Nanette a lover, all Paris would ring with it in an hour.’ The impassioned earnestness of the prince made the company smile; but M. Diderot, siding with him, said he was sure you were better than the best that was said of you.”

Nanette’s eyes filled with tears. Had the youthful pedant been less intent on showing his familiarity with fashionable life, he must have had his suspicions aroused by her agitation. As it was, he was not even enlightened when Nanette, suddenly flinging her arms about his neck in a tender fury, kissed him twice or thrice passionately. He took the kisses complacently as a guerdon for his story. Fraternal obtuseness in such cases is simply limitless. “By the way, Nanette,” he added, “why wouldn’t it be a good idea to thank the prince by sending him some of your prettiest flowers? I can take them to-morrow with some books I am to convey to him.”

“Nonsense!” says Nanette incredulously. “I don’t believe you even know where he lives.”

“Don’t know where he lives?” cries Marcel indignantly. “Perhaps you will tell me next I don’t know where the Hôtel Carnavalet is, or how to find the Rue Culture Ste. Catherine? Don’t know where he lives, indeed!” And Marcel flings out of the room in a state of high dudgeon that his acquaintance with a great man should be doubted, and, worst of all, by Nanette. We are sorry to say he slammed the door after him. The best of brothers will do such things under strong provocation. But Nanette only smiled—the wily Nanette!