Her mother pushed her out. "Go and get dressed directly; put on your blue dress and your hat with the flowers, and make haste." As soon as she had left the room the old woman explained herself: "I have two others, but they are much younger. It costs a lot of money to bring up four children. Luckily the eldest is off my hands at present." Then she told all about herself, about her husband, who had been an employe on the railway, but who was dead, and she expatiated on the good qualities of Carlotta, her second girl, who soon returned, dressed, as her sister had been, in a striking, peculiar manner. Her mother examined her from head to foot, and, after finding everything right, she said: "Now, my children, you can go." Then turning to the girl, she said: "Be sure you are back by ten o'clock to-night; you know the door is locked then." The answer was: "All right, mamma; don't alarm yourself." She took my arm, and we went wandering about the streets, just as I had done the previous year with her sister. We returned to the hotel for lunch, and then I took my new friend to Santa Margarita, just as I had done with her sister the year previously. And she did not go home that night, although the door was to be closed at ten o'clock! During the whole fortnight which I had at my disposal I took Carlotta to all the places of interest in and about Genoa. She gave me no cause to regret the other. She cried when I left her, and the morning of my departure I gave her four bracelets for her mother, besides a substantial token of my affection for herself. One of these days I intend to return to Italy, and I cannot help remembering, with a certain amount of uneasiness, mingled with hope, that Mme. Rondoli has two more daughters. CHALI Admiral de la Vallee, who seemed to be half asleep in his armchair, said in a voice which sounded like an old woman's: "I had a very singular little love adventure once; would you like to hear it?" He spoke from the depths of his great chair, with that everlasting dry, wrinkled smile on his lips, that smile _a la Voltaire_, which made people take him for a terrible skeptic. I I was thirty years of age and first lieutenant in the navy, when I was intrusted with an astronomical expedition to Central India. The English Government provided me with all the necessary means for carrying out my enterprise, and I was soon busied with a few followers in that strange, surprising, prodigious country.