“I had been three days at Aix-la-Chapelle. As I stood one morning at the booth where André Dritzehn exposed his mirrors”--(here, Reader, as he stretched out his hands to touch Claude’s head, you might have seen a faint colour reddening the cheeks of the old man,)--“among the curious who surrounded us, admiring our mirrors polished like steel, was a young girl, who, being suddenly pushed back rudely by the crowd, had only time to cast one rapid glance at our treasures. Her eyes pleased me so much that I said, ‘Try to come forward, little one.’ She did not seem to know that I was addressing her. I repeated my invitation; she did not yet understand me; I tried to take her hand; she drew it quickly away. ‘I am not a German,’ said she, blushing, ‘I am French, from the Faubourg St. Antoine, Paris; if you happen ever to have been there.’ I was obliged to confess, laughing, that I had not. Although I did not understand much of the language spoken by the young girl, I gathered sufficient to be able to answer her. ‘Pretty child,’ I said, ‘wilt thou not buy one of our mirrors?’ ‘Alas! no, sir.’ ‘Thou art in the wrong there, when one has a pretty face like thine, one ought to possess such a piece of furniture.’ Talking in this manner, I placed my hand under her chin, and obliged her to lift up her exquisite face, which till now had been held downwards. She looked at me with her large eyes half supplicating, half reproachfully, then she tried to disengage herself. I held her fast, and placing one of our best mirrors before her, that very one now in your hand--‘Well,’ I said, ‘look then at yourself, little unbeliever.’ A cry of surprise escaped her finely-cut mouth when she saw her blushing face reflected in the polished metal; never before probably had the view been so complete; her beauty seemed to strike her for the first time. I pressed her to buy the mirror, she hesitated; one saw how much she wished to possess it; but all at once she put it quickly down on the bench, ‘I will not,’ she said, and suddenly disappeared in the crowd. I followed her. Our stall was in the square of the Cathedral; I rejoined the fugitive close to the church. ‘Why wilt thou not have it?’ ‘Sir--’ ‘Speak to me without fear.’ ‘Because I have no money to pay for your mirror. Look! here is a denier, the only one left; it is destined for the purchase of two ivory hands, which my mother presents to the Virgin full of grace, as a thank-offering for her cure.’