"I have read Francois Rabelais a great deal, my love. It is in Rabelais and in Villon that I studied French. They are good old masters of language. But, darling, do you know the 'Pantagruel?' ' Pantagruel' is like a beautiful and noble city, full of palaces, in the resplendent dawn, before the street-sweepers of Paris have come. The sweepers have not taken out the dirt, and the maids have not washed the marble steps. And I have seen that French women do not read the 'Pantagruel.' You do not know it? Well, it is not necessary. In the 'Pantagruel,' Panurge asks whether he must marry, and he covers himself with ridicule, my love. Well, I am quite as laughable as he, since I am asking the same question of you." Therese replied with an uneasiness she did not try to conceal: "As for that, my dear, do not ask me. I have already told you my opinion." "But, darling, you have said that only men are wrong to marry. I can not take that advice for myself." Madame Martin looked at the little boyish face and head of Miss Bell, which oddly expressed tenderness and modesty. Then she embraced her, saying: "Dear, there is not a man in the world exquisite and delicate enough for you." She added, with an expression of affectionate gravity: "You are not a child. If some one loves you, and you love him, do what you think you ought to do, without mingling interests and combinations that have nothing to do with sentiment. This is the advice of a friend." Miss Bell hesitated a moment. Then she blushed and arose. She had been a little shocked. CHAPTER XVIII "I KISS YOUR FEET BECAUSE THEY HAVE COME!" Saturday, at four o'clock, Therese went, as she had promised, to the gate of the English cemetery. There she found Dechartre. He was serious and agitated; he spoke little. She was glad he did not display his joy. He led her by the deserted walls of the gardens to a narrow street which she did not know. She read on a signboard: Via Alfieri. After they had taken fifty steps, he stopped before a sombre alley: "It is in there," he said. She looked at him with infinite sadness. "You wish me to go in?" She saw he was resolute, and followed him without saying a word, into the humid shadow of the alley. He traversed a courtyard where the grass grew among the stones. In the back was a pavilion with three windows, with columns and a front ornamented with goats and nymphs. On the moss-covered steps he turned in the lock a key that creaked and resisted. He murmured "It is rusty." She replied, without thought "All the keys are rusty in this country."