The conversation was interrupted by a ring at the door. It was Aline. She came back earlier than usual, because one of her pupils was ill and had not been able to take her lesson. The young girl was flushed and excited, and flung herself into an arm‐chair the moment she entered, and burst into tears. Mme. de Chanoir sat up in alarm, fearing she was ill, and suggested a cup of _tisane_. “Oh! ’tis nothing. I’m an idiot to mind it or let such impertinence vex me,” she said, when the first outburst had passed off and relieved her. “_Mon Dieu!_ but what vexes mamzelle?” inquired Mme. Cléry anxiously. “A horrid man that followed me the length of the street, and made some impudent speech, and asked me where I lived,” sobbed Aline. “Is it possible!” exclaimed the old woman, aghast, and clasping her hands. “Well, mamzelle does astonish me! I thought young men knew better nowadays than to go on with that sort of tricks; fifty years ago they used to. I remember how I was followed and spoken to every time I went to church or to market; it was a persecution; but now I come and go and nobody minds me. To think of their daring to speak to mamzelle!” “That’s what one must expect when one walks about alone at your age, _ma pauvre_ Aline,” said the générale, rather sharply, with a significant look at Mme. Cléry which that good lady understood, and resented by compressing her lips and bobbing her flaps, as much as to say, “One has a principle or one has not”—principle being in this instance synonymous with _particule_.