"Monsieur Officier, I am, as you already know, a Frenchman, a native of the fertile district of Besançon. I succeeded my father in the humble occupation of gardener to the family of this Monsieur Maurice de Mesmai, at the castle of Quinsay, a noble château, built on the banks of the Doubs, which flows through Besançon. The château is of venerable antiquity, and it is said to have been granted to an ancestor of De Mesmai’s by Charles Martel. Ah, monsieur! when I had only my flower-beds and vineries to attend to, no man was happier than I,—François Rosat. With my flowers, my wife and daughter were my sole delights; and when I returned in the evening, after working during the hot dusty days in the garden of the château, what pleasure was mine to be met by my smiling Suzette, with the little laughing Justine in arms, stretching out her hands and crowing with delight at the _bouquet_ of violets and roses I always brought her from my choicest beds. And merrily we used to spend our evenings, for Suzette sung while I played second on the flute, and we taught little Justine to dance as soon as she could walk. My life was all humble happiness then, monsieur; but it was not destined to continue long so. Justine was just sixteen when my wife died, and our old lord dying soon after, this sad _roué_, Monsieur Maurice came to take possession of the château, and terrify the poor peasantry by the wickedness he had learned in Paris and the garrison towns where he had been stationed: he belonged to the dragoons of Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul. This dissipated Maurice, arrayed in all the extreme of Parisian dandyism, the first Sunday we saw him in church formed a strong contrast to our venerable old lord his father, who used to occupy the same pew so devoutly, dressed in his old-fashioned way of Louis the Fifteenth’s days,—his deep waistcoat, silk coat, with its collar covered with powder, and his ruffles and frills starched as stiff as pasteboard; and we soon discovered that if there was a difference in their appearance, there was an equal difference in their hearts and sentiments. "My little Justine had now become a woman, and a very beautiful one,—more especially so for the daughter of a peasant. She was the belle of the rural district, and the people named her the lily of Besançon. Ah, monsieur! although the child of a low-born man, a vassal, she was surprisingly beautiful; too much so to be happy, as my friend Pierre Raoul told me more than once. Her figure was not the less handsome or graceful because, instead of satin or brocade, she wore our homely brown stuffs; and her long black curls, flowing in freedom, seemed a thousand times more beautiful than the locks of high-born ladies, powdered and pasted into puffs and bows by the hands of a fashionable barber.