Gertrude's Journal, June, 1870. HERE I am two days in Paris, having left our beautiful country for this dusty, burning city. I was met on my arrival by my aunt and my cousin Virginie, accompanied by accompanied by the German governess, who was introduced to me as Fraulein Thusnelda. Dizzy and stupified as I was after my eighteen hours' journey I must have appeared cold to my aunt, who received me kindly, repeating over and over again that I was to consider her house as mine, and that she trusted I should find myself happy in it. How grief and a sense of loneliness make one unjust! I should have preferred that all this had been left to be understood. As for Virginie, she just stretched out a hand without looking at me, saying, in a voice that sounded very rude, "How do you do, cousin?"

The governess's manners seemed unctuous and fawning, she kept repeating to me that I was sure to be happy in this blessed home.

When I found myself in my own room-a room in which there is nothing to remind me of the pastI felt such a deadly sadness, felt so appallingly alone, that I gave way to an uncontrollable fit of crying. After my grandmother's death I was alone at Chanzane, but in that solitude, which I loved, there was nothing that was indifferent or a stranger to me. All the rooms of the château were peopled with memories of my childhood, each familiar sound seemed an echo of

the past, inanimate things themselves had a language that I understood, a language that was familiar and dear to my ear. Here everything hurts and saddens me, and jars upon me. Is it that I am one of those plants that die if torn from their native soil?

My aunt is between forty-eight and fifty, of middle height, rather stout, and with a high complexion. She talks a great deal, and in a tone I never heard but with her, as of one thoroughly penetrated with the importance and truth of all she says. I believe, from what I have seen and heard up to the present, that she has good reasons to be on excellent terms with herself. It appears she is a woman of rare order, judgment, and tact. governs her house well, and her prodigious activity is the amazement of every one. She is an irreproachable mother and has given a model education to her daughter. She is evidently a good Christian, for I have already heard her quote more than once the precepts of the Gospel, which she says she takes for her rule of conduct.

She

Were my journal less discreet, it would, perhaps, ask me from what source I have my information, but since it asks me nothing I am not bound to answer.

My cousin Virginie is between sixteen and seventeen. She is neither dark nor fair, her eyes are dull, her figure clumsy, her gestures awkward. There is no look of youth about her and I have not yet heard

from her one genuine laugh. When she does utter one of her rare words, it is with a harsh voice and with a sort of jerk. Her whole person is like an ill-constructed machine, as if the inner spring, that should set the whole thing in motion, had been the work of some uuskilful work

man.

As to Fraulein Thusnelda there is something at once faded and heavy about her. She is blonde, rather fat, no marked outlines of face, no shadows in it, no defined expression, her clear blue eyes have neither lashes nor look, and her smiles are meaningless. She must be a creature unfinished both morally and physically.

With Mademoiselle Justine, the housemaid, who is perpetually offering me her services which I don't need, these so far comprise my whole gallery of portraits.

My room is small and crowded with furniture. It is very pretty, everything blue; there is an àlabaster clock and vases to match. But what is it makes me feel in it as if it were a prison?

The first evening when I opened my window, I saw nothing but high black walls, pierced with a multitude of windows all alike, some dark, a few still lit up; and over all a scrap of sky so narrow that I could count the stars. Where are my broad horizons, my boundless sky, my perfumed nights?

I hear for ever, even when I shut my window, the loud murmur of the immense city, it fills me with a sort of terror. I can't help listening to the voice. I can't interpret it, but its secret is painful, I know, I feel. Yesterday morning, when I went downstairs, Madame Merlin came to meet me.

"Well, my dear niece," she said, "how did you pass your first night under our roof?"

"Thank you, aunt, I had but little sleep."

Her face grew dark.

"Surely you were not uncomfortable? The beds are good. I make it a point that everything in my house shall be of the best quality."

"I could not have been more comfortable, my dear aunt, but the journey, the change agitated me."

"You will soon get accustomed to the change, my dear. No one that I knew of was ever unhappy in our house. Is it not true, liebe Fraülein ?"

Thus questioned, Fraülein Thusnelda answered hurriedly, "Ah! it is the house of the good God."

"Let us sit down to table, my children, my time is precious. If I get through so much in my life, I owe it to method and regularity. There is Fraülein Thusnelda for ever in a state of amazement at all I am able to get through in a day. Is it not true?"

"Ah! it is a mystery that quite bewilders me."

"Nevertheless, my secret is a very simple one. My days are twenty-four hours long like every one else's-but I never lose one second of them. I know beforehand how I am to employ every moment, and should any interruption occur I put on additional energy to recover the time lost. It is rare for me to arrive at the end of my day without having achieved all I intended, overwhelmed with fatigue, it is true. There is nothing extraordinary in my faculties, I know, but force of will is everything. This I possessed even as a child. My father used to say,

This little girl could govern a kingdom.' Others have more brilliant gifts; all I have is energy, persistency in whatever I undertake, but I am satisfied with my lot."

Immediately after breakfast Virginie went to the piano, and sullenly practised her scales and exercises.

"Well," said she to me, as soon as her mother and Fraülein Thusnelda had left the room, "what do you think?"

"Of what?" I asked, going towards her, and quite astonished to hear her speaking to me.

"Of all mamina's virtues! Do you think it possible to possess more? You look shocked, cousin, but, perhaps, if you heard this litany every day of your life, you would be a little sick of it."

I did not know what to answer. How could a young girl speak in this way of her mother?

"I have always heard my grandmother praise Aunt Merlin's activity and savoir-faire," I said at last.

"Well," continued Virginie, without listening to what I said, and in a tone of violence that contrasted with her habitual apathy, "it would weary you, irritate you, and make you wicked. You cannot understand- "

The door opened, and Virginie stopped short, resuming her sulky expression and automatic exercises. I was a little flurried by what this minute's tête-à-tête with my cousin had revealed to me of that perfect education she had received. Was Virginie's temper bad, or did her mother's ways justify all this bitterness?

I was asked to take a walk that I might see Paris. It was then that the mal-du-pays seized me. The broad boulevards, the narrow streets, the obstructions, the dazzling shop-windows, all was disagreeable, and, more than all the rest, the bewildering noise, which in the streets has nothing of the grandeur that you may fancy in it, heard at a distance, when it mounts from all sides like the voice, wail, or murmur of the immense city. My thoughts wandered off to the great silent fields, where, walking and musing, you never meet a human

creature, save from time to time a shepherd-boy, or a woman bent under a load of faggots, nor hear other sound than the exquisite harmony made by the murmur of the water, the whisper of the leaves and grasses, and the voices of their myriad invisible inmates. I saw again the herds of cows looking benevolently at me as I passed, and seeming to say, "We know you, you who live near us." And while letting my thoughts thus wander far away from what was before my eyes, and walking slowly between Virginie and Fraülein Thusnelda, I felt my heart ready to break at its loneliness.

I came back without having seen a single thing that really interested me, except in a narrow street a little ragged child, pretty as an angel, who had fallen into the gutter close to me. He was quite a baby, and all curled and hardly able to walk. I picked him up, and, giving him back to his mother, who had come out of a house in search of. him, I could not resist giving him a kiss. Virginie looked at me in perfect amazement.

"Do you like children?" she asked.

"Greatly; especially when they are as pretty as that boy is."

"Ab!" exclaimed Fraülein Thusnelda, "they are little angels of paradise; I adore them."

A little farther on, one of these angels, treading on her dress that trailed along majestically, received from their worshipper a good box on the ear and some angry words.

Virginie looked at me from the corner of her eye. "She adores them, but at a distance," she said. "For my part, I know nothing so insupportable as those little brats, pretty or ugly, clean or dirty. Bah! if all were frank, every one would confess the same."

We continued our walk in silence.
On our return, my aunt gave us