It was towards the end of the pleasant month of May, that Dorsain D'Elsac reached Salency, in Picardy, and stopped at the door of his sister's cottage, a Madame Durocher, who dwelt in that village. Dorsain D'Elsac was one of three children. The elder, Pauline, however, was no more; she had married, but was never a mother, so that the children of Margoton Durocher, his remaining sister, were the nearest relatives he had left in the world. It is true D'Elsac had a wife, one, I must say, of the best tempered women in all Dauphiny,--she was a native of Grenoble, in that province,--but she was now getting on in years, and was often very weary of her daily employment, and yet she had no one to whom she could occasionally entrust her duties. It was one evening, when complaining of this to her husband, that Madame D'Elsac suddenly exclaimed, "What say you, Dorsain, of sending to Salency for one of your sister Margoton Durocher's grown up daughters; as Pauline has left no family, we may ask Margoton to let us have one of her three good-sized girls? Had we not better have one of your own nieces, Dorsain, than a stranger?" Though Madame D'Elsac, having once thought of this plan, was ready and willing to put it into execution without a thought, not so her worthy husband. He must first weigh the affair steadily in his mind, and repeat over and over again to his wife, that if once they took a relative into their house, they could not part with her as a hired attendant if she did not suit them; "and then you know, Delphine," he added, "you and I are so happy and comfortable together, that I should not like to invite one to our home who might make that home disagreeable." Madame D'Elsac's disposition was of that easy kind that she allowed her worthy partner almost to talk himself against the arrangement altogether, and the matter would probably have dropped without any consequences, had not Dorsain mentioned it to a neighbour, who had been at Salency two years before, and who had been highly delighted with the lovely daughters of Madame Durocher. So the affair was settled, that D'Elsac should invite a niece to wait upon his wife, and to reside with them on their pretty little farm, near Grenoble, on the borders of Swisserland. The next point in question was, whether this selected niece should be Caliste, Victorine, or Lisette, for as to little Mimi, the fourth daughter of Madame Durocher, she was considered altogether too young for the office.