Moreover, at the end of that book of little reading lessons there is a page which I have kissed a thousand times since. It represents—and not very badly—Mariette as she appeared then with a little spaniel dog looking up in her face. Oh! how well I recollect when it was drawn. I could always handle my pencil well, though I don’t know when I learnt to draw; but as we were coming near the end of the book, I promised Mariette if she would be a very good girl indeed, and get through the remaining lessons in a week, that I would draw her picture at the end with an imaginary dog which she was always to have at some indefinite period in the future; for she was exceedingly fond of dogs, and I believe the highest ambition of her heart at that moment was to have a spaniel of her own. Before Saturday night fell, the lessons were all done, and I was immediately reminded of my promise. We sat in the porch, with the western sky just growing purple, and I made her get up and stand at a little distance, and sketched her lightly with a pen and ink, and then at her feet, I drew from memory the best dog I could manufacture, with its ears falling back, and its face turned up toward her. How delighted she was when she saw it, and how she clapped her little hands! It was all charming, but the spaniel above all, and I doubt not she was convinced that she should soon have a dog exactly like that. She ran with it, first to Father Bonneville, who was in the next room, and then to her mother, who was very sad that evening; but she kissed her child, and looked at the drawing, and dropped some tears upon it—the traces are there still. Then Mariette came back to me, and thanked and embraced me, and declared that I was the dearest, best boy that ever lived, and that when she was old enough, she would draw me at the end of one of my books, with a great big dog as big as a horse. This is all very trifling perhaps, and not much worthy of record, but in those trifling times, and those trifling things lie the brightest and the sweetest memories of my life. It was all so pure, so artless, so innocent. We were there in that little garden, as in a Paradise, and the atmosphere of all our thoughts was the air of Eden. Such things never last very long. I reached my thirteenth birth-day there, and it was kept with kindly cheerfulness by Father Bonneville and Madame de Salins. Mariette I remember wove me a wreath of flowers, and put it on my head after dinner; but that was her last happy day for a long while. The next day Madame de Salins walked to the city as usual, and Father Bonneville went with her. They were long in returning; but when they did come back there was a sparkling light in the eyes of Madame de Salins which I little fancied augured so much wo to me.