At this reproach, Edouard first stared, then grinned.  “I forgot that,” said he.

“Yes, and you forgot the moon isn’t made of green cheese.  However, if I saw you very humble, and very penitent, I might, perhaps, really forgive you—­in time.”

“No, forgive me at once.  I don’t understand your angelical, diabolical, incomprehensible sex:  who on earth can? forgive me.”

“Oh! oh! oh! oh!”

Lo! the tears that could not come at a remonstrance were flowing in a stream at his generosity.

“What is the matter now?” said he tenderly.  She cried away, but at the same time explained,—­

“What a f—­f—­foolish you must be not to see that it is I who am without excuse.  You were my betrothed.  It was to you I owed my duty; not my sister.  I am a wicked, unhappy girl.  How you must hate me!”

“I adore you.  There, no more forgiving on either side.  Let our only quarrel be who shall love the other best.”

“Oh, I know how that will be,” said the observant toad.  “You will love me best till you have got me; and then I shall love you best; oh, ever so much.”

However, the prospect of loving best did not seem disagreeable to her; for with this announcement she deposited her head on his shoulder, and in that attitude took a little walk with him up and down the Pleasaunce:  sixty times; about eight miles.

These two were a happy pair.  This wayward, but generous heart never forgot her offence, and his forgiveness.  She gave herself to him heart and soul, at the altar, and well she redeemed her vow.  He rose high in political life:  and paid the penalty of that sort of ambition; his heart was often sore.  But by his own hearth sat comfort and ever ready sympathy.  Ay, and patient industry to read blue-books, and a ready hand and brain to write diplomatic notes for him, off which the mind glided as from a ball of ice.

In thirty years she never once mentioned the servants to him.

“Oh, let eternal honor crown her name!”

It was only a little bit of heel that Dard had left in Prussia.  More fortunate than his predecessor (Achilles), he got off with a slight but enduring limp.  And so the army lost him.

He married Jacintha, and Josephine set them up in Bigot’s, (deceased) auberge.  Jacintha shone as a landlady, and custom flowed in.  For all that, a hankering after Beaurepaire was observable in her.  Her favorite stroll was into the Beaurepaire kitchen, and on all fetes and grand occasions she was prominent in gay attire as a retainer of the house.  The last specimen of her homely sagacity I shall have the honor to lay before you is a critique upon her husband, which she vented six years after marriage.

“My Dard,” said she, “is very good as far as he goes.  What he has felt himself, that he can feel for:  nobody better.  You come to him with an empty belly, or a broken head, or all bleeding with a cut, or black and blue, and you shall find a friend.  But if it is a sore heart, or trouble, and sorrow, and no hole in your carcass to show for it, you had better come to me; for you might as well tell your grief to a stone wall as to my man.”