have to exercise a great deal of ingenuity to find out if we have ever met.  Before appearing before them, I inquire if they are fashionable people, spent last winter in Paris, &c.?  I am told Don Quixote is almost a savage; he travels all the time so as to sustain his character as knight-errant, and that he spent last winter in Rome....  This quieted my fears ...  I did not appear in society until last winter, so Don Quixote never saw me; knowing we could meet without the possibility of recognition, I dismissed him from my mind.

Yesterday, at three o’clock, Madame de Meilhan and her son went to the depot to meet their guests.  I was standing at the front door when they drove off, and Madame de Meilhan called out to me:  “My dear Madame Guerin, I recommend my bouquets to you; pray spare me the eternal soucis with which the cruel Etienne insists upon filling my rooms; now I rely upon you for relief.”

I smiled at this pun as if I had never heard it before, and promised to superintend the arrangement of the flowers.  I went into the garden and found Etienne gathering soucis, more soucis, nothing but soucis.  I glanced at his flower-beds, and at once understood the cause of his predilection for this dreadful flower; it was the only kind that deigned to bloom in his melancholy garden:  This is the secret of many inexplicable preferences.

I thought with horror that Madame de Meilhan would continue to be a prey to soucis if I did not come to her rescue, so I said:  “Etienne, what a pity to cull them all! they are so effective in a garden; let us go look for some other flowers—­it is a shame to ruin your beautiful beds!” The flattered Stephen eagerly followed me to a corner of the garden where I had admired some superb catalpas.  He gathered branches of them, with which I filled the Japanese vases on the mantel, and ornamented the corners of the parlor, thus converting it into a flowery grove.  I also arranged some Bengal roses and dahlias that had escaped Etienne’s culture, and with the addition of some asters and a very few soucis I must confess, I was charmed with the result of my labors.  But I wanted some delicate flowers for the pretty vase on the centre table, and remembering that an old florist, a friend of Madame Taverneau and one of my professed admirers, lived about a mile from the chateau, I determined to walk over and describe to him the dreadful condition of Madame de Meilhan, and appeal to him for assistance.  Fortunately I found him in his green-house, and delighted him by repeating the pun about filling the house with soucis.  Provincials have a singular taste for puns; I never make them, and only repeat them because I love to please.  The old man was fascinated, and rewarded my flattery by making me up a magnificent bouquet of rare, unknown, nameless, exquisite flowers that could be found nowhere else; my bouquet was worth a fortune, and what fortune ever exhaled such perfume?  I started off triumphant.  I tell you all this to show how calm and little inclined I was to romance on that morning.