"It is high to climb;" she apologised, as we came to the third steep flight of stairs, "but I thought I would put you here, as you might like to sleep in the rooms in which Count Ernest grew up to be the man he is, and which he always preferred to any others. And they are more comfortable too, for I look after them myself, and carefully dust out every corner. And to-morrow morning, when you awake, you can see his favorite tree by the window; it has grown up so high meanwhile, that by reaching out your hand you can lay hold of it. Ah, and well a day! when we live to be so old, we live to see many a young child, and many a young tree, grow up and reach to Heaven, and leave us wearily to climb after them!" With these words, we came to the top, where a long low corridor ran past a range of garret rooms, hardly above man's height. A covey of newly fledged bats, scared by the light, were flapping about against the ceiling. "There must be a hole somewhere in the roof;" said the old lady looking up, with a shake of her head; "I have told the man to mend it ten times and more. But he always pretends he can find no hole, and thus it is with every thing." She opened a door, and shewed me into a large low room, where a light was burning on a chiffonier, and where the atmosphere was purer and more lifelike than without. "Here we are;" she said. "Here he lived until he went on his travels with Monsieur Leclerc, and then again before he went to college; and also the last time he was here. Everything is just as it used to be. That faded tapestry with the great hunting pieces may have faded a trifle more; and the writing-table there, with the brass mountings, by the window--the wood-worm is making sad havoc of it. Every time I come, I find above an inch of yellow dust to sweep away. That is his own pretty blue water-bottle; and the gilded glass was a present from his tutor. I worked that little rug before the bed, to give him when he was confirmed, and he never would allow it to be removed, long after the work was quite worn away. The bed is not his; I took his down stairs;" and, with a faint flush, that brought back a touching tint of youth to her refined old face, she added: "in that I sleep myself." "Indeed, my dear Mamsell Flor," I said; "and he was worthy of being loved by a heart so faithful. He bore the stamp of his most ingenuous soul so clearly upon his noble brow, that even those who merely saw him pass, could not choose but believe all good of him. By the time I knew him he had become reserved; but what must he have been to you, who reared him from his birth, and were to him as a mother! What happened to make him give up this place, and leave a home for ever, that used to be so dear to him?"