standing upon very much the same footing as the art of deportment. Twice every day the tide swept up to the cliffs of Bonneville, and Pauline's life passed on with the great expanse of surging water before her eyes. She had given over playing and romping, for she no longer had a companion. When she had run along the terrace with Matthew, or strolled to the end of the kitchen-garden with Minouche, her only pleasure was to go and gaze at the sea, which was full of changing life, dark and gloomy in the stormy days of winter, and gleaming with bright blues and greens beneath the summer sun. The beneficent influence which seemed to flow from the girl's presence in the house manifested itself in another form that year, for Chanteau received from Davoine a quite unlooked-for remittance of five thousand francs, which threats of a dissolution of partnership had extorted from him. Madame Chanteau never missed going to Caen each quarter to receive her niece's dividends, and when she had deducted her expenses and the sum which she was allowed for Pauline's board, she invested the balance in the purchase of further stock. On returning home she always took the girl into her room, and, opening the well-known drawer in the secrétaire, said to her: 'There, you see, I am putting this with the other. Isn't it getting a big heap? Don't be at all uneasy about it. You will find it all there when you want it. There won't be a centime missing.' One fine morning in August Lazare suddenly made his appearance, bringing with him the news of his complete success in his preliminary examinations. He had not been expected for another week, but he had wanted to take his mother by surprise. His arrival greatly delighted them all. In the letters which he had written home every fortnight he had shown an increasing interest in medicine, and, now that he was amongst them again, he appeared to be completely changed. He never spoke a word about music, but was perpetually chattering about his professors and his scientific studies, dragging them in _à propos_ of everything, even of the dishes that were served at dinner and the direction in which the wind was blowing. He was, now, a prey to another wildly enthusiastic ambition, for he dreamed, day and night, of becoming a physician, whose wonderful skill would be trumpeted through the whole world. Pauline, when she had thrown her arms round his neck and kissed him with child-like frankness, was more surprised than the others at this change in him. It almost grieved her, indeed, that he should have dropped all his interest in music, even as a recreation. Could it be possible, she asked herself, that, when one had really loved anything, one could end by caring nothing at all about it? One day when she asked him about his symphony, he began to make fun of it, and told her that he had quite done with all such nonsense. She felt quite sad at those words. But he also seemed to be soon bored with her