“Ah, have you forgotten me!” she exclaimed; “mon cher ami, mon ancien ami; have you forgotten Paqueta—little Paqueta, who would not count five!” All of Paqueta, as I had taken leave of her upon the ship’s deck, came back to me in a moment, and I wondered that I had not recognized her, enlarged as she was, with the same beauty, the same heart, the same child-character, raised and instructed to fill another and higher condition in life. She was so warm, so truthful, so full of recollections of the early years which she still loved, that I half feared she might again roll at my feet, and take them in her hands, and say, “_non, ce n’est pas juste; un, trois, quatre_”—and I told her so. “And now, you must know my husband, my Charles,” said she, turning to her companion who stood making big eyes at the scene which was enacted before him. Charles received me with the polished courtesy of a Frenchman, asked for my address, gave me his own, and said that his wife received her friends every Thursday. We parted; Paqueta, a being of impulse, all the girl again, laughing until her eyes ran over at my perplexity, which I could not wholly conceal, and I promising that she should see me on the morrow, although Thursday was yet two days off. On ascending to my rooms, at the head of four flights of French stairs, dark, odorous, and which comfort never visited but to die, I opened my note book, and commenced the journal of the day. I am now writing from it, and the page is marked with a flourish, a sort of out-breaking animal spirits, to show that it commemorates one of the happiest incidents of my life. “Charles R——; so; I have heard of that name before. He is something already, and is young enough to become in the end a great deal more. Charles R——; he must be a feuilletonist or a politician, an attaché to some one of the innumerable parties with which this miserable country is cursed; for these are the only names that get over to the other side of the water. Very well, he has won Paqueta—and she was worth the winning. Into what a noble woman the little minx has grown! And who can discover a trace of her former servitude about her! I hope he knows her beginning; and certainly Paqueta is too honest to have concealed her life; how does an extreme civilization civilize away our prejudices: and, after all, condition is but one of the positive laws of men.”