On the way, I had reflected on the situation in which I found myself, and its complete absurdity struck me for the first time. Here was I, a young man alone in Paris, knowing no one, with no fortune but youth’s hope for the future, assuming the protection of a pretty girl of sixteen or seventeen, whom I had never seen until ten minutes since and whose name I did not even know. I could not help laughing as I seated myself beside her. She looked at me for a moment with a glance clear and unembarrassed, but in which there was nothing bold nor immodest, and then, comprehending my thought, she threw back her head and laughed with me. I was enchanted, and in my admiration forgot my mirth. I saw that her throat was full, round, and white, that her chin was adorable, that there were dimples in her cheeks, that her mouth was finely arched, and her teeth small and regular. I felt a sudden warmth about my heart. Plainly here was a girl innocent as well as beautiful, and who looked at the world with eyes in which there was no trace of jaundice or suspicion. Harm such a one? Not I! “Come, Mademoiselle,” I said at last, “it is necessary for us to arrive at an understanding of the situation. You behold in me Pierre le Moyne, late of Mont-de-Marsan, but for a week past and I trust for the future, of Paris, and, I repeat, wholly at your service,” and as I said the word I arose and bowed before her. She acknowledged my bow with a pretty little nod of the head. “And I, M. le Moyne,” she answered, “am Mademoiselle Anne Ribaut; although I much prefer to be called Nanette, and, I fear, very greatly in need of your services.” “Tell me the story,” I suggested, and reseated myself beside her. “Well, M. le Moyne,” she began, “it is like this. My father and mother are both dead--have been dead for so long that I remember neither of them--and my father’s brother, Jacques Ribaut, a jeweller of the Rue des Moulins, is my guardian. Until a week ago he kept me at the convent of the Sacred Heart, and then, finally, just as I began to think I was to spend my whole life there, he sent for me. Oh, how pleased I was when the time came to leave those fearful gray walls, within which one never dared speak above a whisper! But I did not imagine what was about to befall me, or I should not have been so happy. I arrived at the Rue des Moulins; I was shown into the presence of my uncle, and I tried to make him love me. He looked me over much as he would have inspected an ox he was about to purchase, and he seemed well satisfied.” “I do not doubt it,” I said, and I looked at her sparkling eyes and laughing mouth, and thought that a man must indeed be hard to please who would not be satisfied.