One day M.Moriaz said to his daughter: "Mme.

de Lorcy is displeased with us; this grieves me.

I fear you have dropped some word that has wounded her.

I shall be greatly obliged to you if you will go and see her and coax her into good-humour." "You gave me a far from agreeable commission," she rejoined, "but I can refuse you nothing; I shall go to-morrow to Maisons." At the precise moment when this conversation was taking place, Mme.
de Lorcy, who was passing the day in Paris, entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

The exhibition of the work of a celebrated painter, recently deceased, had attracted thither a great throng of people.Mme.de Lorcy moved to and fro, when suddenly she descried a little old woman, sixty years of age, with a snub nose, whose little gray eyes gleamed with malice and impertinence.