Thus passed the first evening. The next morning the party assembled at an early hour to breakfast; after which the gentlemen went out, and did not appear until dinnertime,--day succeeding day in unvarying but to me not unpleasing monotony. I rarely wandered from the large wilderness of a garden near the house, and saw weeks pass over without a thought ever occurring to me that life must not thus be suffered to ebb. CHAPTER XXIX. MY NAMESAKE About a month after I came to live in the “pension,” I was sitting one evening at the window, watching, with the interest an idle man will ever attach to slight things,--the budding leaves of an early spring,--when I heard a step approach my chair, and on turning my head perceived Madame de Langeac. She carried her taboret in her hand, and came slowly towards me. “I am come to steal some of your sunshine, Monsieur Burke,” said the old lady, smiling good-naturedly, as I rose to present a chair, “but not to drive you away, if you will be generous enough to keep me company.” I stammered out some commonplace civility in reply, and was silent, for my thoughts were bent upon my future, and I was ill disposed to interruption. “You are fond of flowers, I have remarked,” continued she, as if perceiving my preoccupation, and willing to relieve it by taking the burden of the conversation. “And it is a taste I love to witness; it seems to me like the evidence of a homely habit. It is only in childhood we learn this love; we may cultivate it in after life as we will.” “My mother was passionately fond of them,” said I, calling up a long-buried memory of home and kindred. “I thought so. These simple tastes are the inheritance a mother gives her child; and happily they survive every change of fortune.” I sighed heavily as she spoke, for thus accidentally was touched the weakest chord of my heart. “And, better still,” resumed she, “they are the links that unite us to the past, that bind the heart of manhood to infancy, that can bring down pride and haughtiness, and call forth guileless affection and childlike faith.” “They are happy,”' said I, musing, “who can mingle such early memories with the present.” “And who cannot?” interrupted she, rapidly. “Who has not felt the love of parents,--the halo of a home? Old as I am, even I can recall the little walks I trod in infancy, and the hand that used to guide me. I can bring up the very tones of that voice which vibrated on my heart as they spoke my name. But how much happier they to whom these memories are linked with tokens of present affection, and who, in their manhood's joys, can feel a father's or a mother's love!” “I was left an orphan when a mere child,” said I, as though the observation had been specially addressed to me. “But you have brothers,--sisters, perhaps.” I shook my head. “A brother, indeed; but we have never met since we were children.”