And of course the young man, the valet, told me he knew she could not find a girl so pretty as I anywhere! I would find when I got to Paris, he said, how I would be admired, and then I would rejoice that I had not stayed in my stupid little village, where it mattered not if one had a pretty face or not.

I had come home quite full of the idea--quite confident that, as I had always done exactly what I wished, I would meet with no difficulty.

But to my astonishment, at the paternal house, one would not hear of such a thing! "'To leave us--thou, our only girl--to go away to that great Paris, where one is so wicked--where none would guard thee or care for thee?
No, it is not to be thought of,' said my father with decision; and though he was a quiet man who seldom interfered in the affairs of the house, I knew well that once that he had said a thing with decision, it was done with--it would be so.
"And my mother said gently, "'How could'st thou ask such a thing, Marie ?' "And the bon papa looked at me with sad reproach; that was worse than all.
"So this day--the day that bon papa had given me the first apple of the season--I was to go to Chalet to tell my friends it could not be, I felt very cross and angry all the way there.
"'What have I done,' I said to myself, 'to be looked at as if I were wicked and ungrateful?
Why should my life be given up to the fancies of a foolish old man like bon papa ?' "And when I got to Chalet and told my friends it was not to be, their regret and their disappointment made me still more displeased.
"'It is too much,' they all said, 'that you should be treated still like a bebe--you so tall and womanly that one might think you twenty.' "'And if I were thee, Marie,' said one, 'I would go all the same.

They would soon forgive thee when they found how well things would go with thee at Paris.

How much money thou wouldst gain!' "'But how could I go ?' I asked.
"Then they all talked together and made a plan.